Too busy to think

June 3rd, 2006

Seth Godin wrote about “Marketing potholes” we all tend to fall into. My take on this article is that marketers (or the people in an organisation charged with marketing) spend most of their time on the tactical side of the fence (doing budgets, promotions, meet and greets) and far too little time on big ideas that can truly set a firm apart.

For small and medium business this problem is even more accute.

They often don’t have a senior marketing person; the role is carved up between the CEO and the Sales Manager who are flat out trying to keep up with the day-to-day responsibilities.
Marketing is not seen as “everything a company does” as Seth defines it (and I agree with) but as “promotions”. So if any “marketing” work is done, it is about promotions (the new brochure ware, the new website)
If they do set time aside to take a good hard look at what their real potential differentiation is, they often don’t have the skills inhouse to evaluate what is a workable and what isn’t.

As a result, they either don’t do anything or go for the “gut feel” approach with all the associated risks.

So unless the folks running a business agree what “marketing” is in their organisation, how important it is to their success and how they will resource it, great ideas are not very likely to get beyond the brainstorm phase.

But what an opportunity for those who do.