If you’ve got rats, don’t get a rat-catcher. (?)

We've already discussed the ‘silver bullet’ of marketing, and that on its own, it doesn't exist; if we had it, we’d have retired to a tropical beach ages ago. Marketing is a building process made with many different components, and like all buildings, you don’t want to rush and cut corners if you want it to survive the test of time.

We were talking with a local retailer towards the end of last year who was fairly up-beat and looking forward to a Christmas rush, was fairly confident of wanting to talk with us in the new year after he had got his breath back, ramp up the marketing and look forward to sales growth and an even better Christmas the following year. He had an awful Christmas; they didn't promote themselves, hadn't done any advertising, had no sales promotions and relied purely on passing trade. So now, he says, he won’t be doing any marketing at all this year. Personally, I don’t believe him: my guess is that he’ll follow the same process as he did in the lead up to the underwhelming festive season he has just experienced.

I have an allotment, and expend a great deal of effort to grow veg for my family. A couple of years ago, we had problems with rats, and I can assure you, if you spend so much time preparing the ground, growing the plants from seed, planting out, watering, feeding and assiduously caring for what is the best tasting sweetcorn you've tasted only to get a rat problem, the culprits who don’t just take one and finish it, but take chunks out of every ear, you are not best pleased. I didn't even bother to try and sort it out myself, I called the rat-catcher immediately.

That’s the point, really: if you have identified a problem, get someone in who can fix it. This is not being over-simplistic, it’s common sense. Unfortunately, this is something we encounter all the time: marketing costs money, but many small businesses see it as an unnecessary evil and certainly not the investment as, if done properly, the investment you really have to make if you want to thrive and prosper.