Marketing is an essential skill for small business success

A huge part of business is marketing and this is where I see lots of people fall down.

I first started studying marketing in 1998 and it formed the majority of my elective modules at university, I then worked in recruitment which used my marketing (and sales skills) and retrained as a business & economics teacher where I taught marketing.

Even in education when I was a consultant and a senior leader we looked at marketing: four 3 1/2 years I was selling a project I was working on into businesses and schools. I needed to understand the benefits to both parties and for them to know why they needed to be involved.

As a senior leader I helped to market the school to new parents: this meant I went to over 50 primary schools every year to build relationships (in person marketing!) and to listen to what they wanted. I worked with the Headteacher on our campaigns and sat in meetings whilst we discussed the merits of bus rather local press advertising (I had to fight my gut on this one as have a personal aversion to bus adverts!)

I built my business originally as a career and confidence coach through marketing and then transitioned to this business as I realise how much I know and understand the marketing process.

For me people have always been in the centre of that process but understanding our market positioning and how that impacts the price and what we offer is key.

Appreciating that we need to differentiate and evolve what we do as the market matures and changes means that you build a sustainable business and I can explain the why behind this.

Often when we are in our zone of genius we don't realise that everyone doesn't know what we know.

This is why I am going to spend more time with all my clients in 2020 getting super clear on what their marketing looks like and why they do what they do..

And guess what I am not talking social media: I am talking across all platforms and offline as well as on: the entire marketing mix that you use for your business.

Sounds good? drop me a message to see how I can help you at [email protected]