This is an interesting post by John Folls on October 21.
We tend to agree with John; the biggest problem that most owners have is that they didn’t do market research before they opened the doors, so they don’t know a USP, don’t know who their customers are, and can’t figure out how to market to reach them with any promotional vehicles. Ergo, no marketing sense. So, John’s post is a little ungrounded in reality.
So, along comes some advertising guy or gal and sells them a package which may or may not be suited to their customers. This does hurt, mostly the bottom line. However, it can help illuminate what does work.
Now, having said that, many marketing consultants will function as the marketing department for businesses, albeit a rather expensive one. I also own the Marketing Doctor consultancy, which was set up on the premise that most companies didn’t know how to market, and having done over 200 consults in the 20+ years it was active, many of which were retainers for such companies, it was and is a good concept. We normally functioned as the marketing and sales department, normally growing a client to the point where they could hire a good specialist to replace us. We still fix marketing and sales through Solutions Forum.
Here’s the link to John’s article: http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/10/5-reasons-why-do-it-yourself-marketing-can-actually-hurt-your-business