“Marketing is the discussion of ambition” Gary Vee

While I was working on a side project, I was listening to one of Gary Vee’s videos and I heard him say that “marketing is the discussion of ambition”. It really resonated with my belief and with a discussion I recently had with a CEO who went all-out on sales and neglected his marketing effort. Is it such a problem when the company is doing ok thanks to its sales team? Let’s see …

Ps: this article is not a hate letter to any sales team. You’re necessary, appreciated, and have all my respect. We have different jobs but the same objectives, so let’s work together!

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Which spice do you need to scale?

Any business owner has its objectives and none of them are wrong. Things go wrong when objectives are not linked to the right strategy. If you want to do grow bigger than a street business, you’ll need to invest in marketing.

Marketing has an innate characteristic that makes it perfect to scale your business: your action and its result are not bound to the place and the time they took place. You can go to an awesome tradeshow and try to sell your good. And you should. But your sales action will only be effective to the people who were there, at the moment you were talking to them. The return on investment is bound to time, place, and the number of sellers.

On the other hand, marketing creates resources that can live forever online. They can be recycled and reused in order to attract more clients. And more important, it can reach people on a far larger scale.

Reaching more people, at any place, at any moment of time … this is the best way to scale.

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Make thousands of dollars with a penny

A solution to grow would also be to hire more people, who could send more emails and do more phone calls. This is true. Nothing to say against it… but how much would it cost?

There are many types of marketing actions and their effectiveness vastly changes over time. But if we speak about nowadays world, targeted content is key. People consume tons of content would it be videos on YouTube and TikTok, pictures on Instagram, or blog articles on Medium.

Creating content can cost a lot but a phone is enough. A computer and a free account on Canvas is enough. Using such content, you can make people aware of who you are, position yourself as an expert or top brand in your market and redirect people to your store. You can invest a bit in ads on social media, but you can also share your content online for free, work on SEO and keywords and use other free methods to increase your reach.

One of my favorite sales strategies is to create an article about a certain type of client and send them the article by email. I contact them back a week later to ask if they found value in our article and if they’d like to organize a call to speak about their situation. This is how marketing can skyrocket the number of people you contact and provide value to.

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Marketing is a broader term than you think

I spoke about social media, content, and email. What else do you think about when you hear the word “marketing”? Personally, it feels like an almost endless list.

Marketing is a really broad term. According to the Cambridge dictionary, marketing are “jobs that involve encouraging people to buy a product or service”. In this sense, sale is also marketing. Marketing starts by market study, to strategy to the implementation of marketing. There are even terms like HR marketing. Marketing is everything you do and don’t do. It defines the likeliness a person will buy from you or not. It defines how people perceive your brand. It also defines if they’d like to work for you or not.

All these things are important for any business owner, to generate sales or support the other teams. And the most important point, probably of this article, is if you don’t manage your image, someone else will do it for you. If you just put a picture of a standard wine bottle and a high price next to it, people will think it’s an expensive wine bottle. If you work on your marketing, they’ll see it as a high-quality wine bottle. This gap can cost you a sale, probably thousands.

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“… But it doesn’t work for me”

I’d like to address the most common objections I hear. “I tried. It doesn’t work for me”. It’s usually followed by some info on their sector, particular product, the fact that they work with companies and not consumers, etc.

I learned to swim quite late. I tried many times, but it didn’t work for me. When I was 8, I found motivation, I took a few classes and it ended up working. I’m still not an Olympic swimmer but I don’t sink. Trying and failing don’t mean it doesn’t work. It means that something went wrong, and some things need to be tweaked. Marketing can feel like a long-term practice but if mixed with other actions, it can create results faster.

To address the B2B objection, I’d say something really obvious but often forgotten: the person you’re trying to sell in a company is also a human, like you. The sales and payment process may differ, indeed, but he also searches for info on google, watch tv, go on social media, and so on. Even during its working hours. Increasing its awareness of your brand and service/product through these channels is the best way to not sound salesy. Because nobody like salesy phone calls or emails.

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Everybody has grand goal. You want to become the n°1 in your market. Have a ten-story building for your company. Retire in 5 years. Define your goal precisely. If they are long-term, divide them into smaller objectives and define a strategy to reach them, step by step. They are high chance that your answer to how to reach them will be some sort of marketing activity.

Don’t ditch any strategy because they are marketing and you need short-term results, in your special sector. Build a strategy that works short-term but also builds a brand and a system that will help you scale in the long term. Sale is the easy way. For great ambition, you need to go further, try harder, think bigger.?