Marketing inside out

When we think of marketing, most confuse it with the 30 second commercials on TV that show big breasted women selling a can of beer. That's advertising and it plays a small role in the big business of marketing

Marketing is a broken up into the four categories. They are affectionately known as the four P's: Product, Price, Promotion, Place.

Promotion is comprised of advertising, street signs, decals, flyers, billboards, outside signage.

Price is your strategies on price. Any promotions you do that is price related is part of this funnel.

Place is your physical/virtual location. You may have a website, facebook page, twitter account and youtube channel. You may also have an email address, and physical location. If your place is a restaurant and it smells bad, customer probably won't buy from your company in the future.

Product can be physical or service related. In a service industry, time is sold instead of physical stuff. Time is still a product.

When we market our business, we need to market from the inside out.
Most focus on the outside in.

Let me give you an example of an outside-in perspective. Imagine you have a billion dollars to spend on advertising your little restaurant. You dominate the airwaves on TV and radio. Everyone in your market know you exist, where you are, and what the current promotion is. They drool over the food on TV and the next day they go to your restaurant. The first day is a Monday and your restaurant is packed with hungry people who saw the ads over the past week. The cooks are overwhelmed. The average table gets food in 45 minutes. The servers are running around like chickens and the food is cold by the time it gets to your table. Not to mention the server didn't refill your pop once, nor did she look at you when she handed you the bill. The food looked nothing like the TV advertisement. The service was poor and slow. You don't complain but you won't be back.

I'm exaggerating the obvious. But many entrepreneurs have poor standards internally and when customers stop coming, they think the problem is an outside marketing problem. When in fact, the problem is internal. Fix the internal problems first. Be awesome at what you do first. Word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising.

It works really slow.
Advertising speeds up the inevitable. If your company sucks, more people will find out faster with advertising. It works the same if your company is awesome.

Start with being awesome.