I often ask businesses what are the marketing challenges they face. It’s always interesting to get a business’s perspective and compare that with my own.
I tend to work with small SMEs who don’t have a marketing manager or director. For them the main challenges tend to be:
- Cost (of marketing)
- Choice (of communication channel)
- Customer (targeting the right business to maximise growth)
I’d include a few more fundamental ones. These are usually a direct result of having a limited internal marketing resource:
- Purpose (those all important objectives)
- Pledge (the promise to commit to marketing for life)
- Plan (written and shared)
I’d include a couple more too.
The message is often difficult to get right. Technical businesses in particular struggle a little to make it easy for customers to understand their message. Often they feel a technical market needs the technical jargon. Sometimes they forget that just because you’re technical doesn’t mean you understand every technical field. Also the decision makers aren’t always technical.
It’s also important to keep the message consistent. It’s tempting to change it, thinking variety is the spice of life. For marketing, sometimes variety just leads to customer confusion.
I’ll be talking more about these challenges in a Royal Society of Chemistry, Chemistry World webinar on July 3rd. I hope you’ll be able to join me. I’ll be sending out more details nearer the time.
