Stick To What You're Good At

I've just found another one... another website that has a message badly placed on it, saying "We're in the process of updating our website".

To me, and I think to many visitors, that means "we know we're rubbish..." The intention of the site's owner is to complete that sentence with "... but please come and look around anyway, and come back when we've finished... sorry... sorry... sorry". 

However, on the internet we're all nomads with no ability to concentrate for more than a few seconds, so the reality is that we'll be off to another site in a blink of the eye.

Why do you hire sales people? Because you don't have the time or maybe the expertise to do it yourself, and you expect that the amount that you invest in sales will be more than returned by their efforts. It's exactly the same with marketing.

As marketers we have a wide experience of helping organisations meet their goals. That may come as a surprise to those who do their own "marketing"... a DIY website... an advert in some magazine that phoned with "a great offer". I may be going out on a limb here, but I'd guess that these people never actually measure what return they get from these "investments".

A seasoned marketer will ask about goals, find out about how the business works, learn about the competitive environment, and then develop a set of actions that will fit the criteria and meet the goals. Planning before spending time, effort and money, and delivering a good return are all very important to a marketer.

Anyway... just off to fix a fuse. I'm sure a chocolate bar wrapper will be fine...