Hello this is Rachel Karl with Suite 4, and today we’re going to be talking about the difference between Good vs. Bad Marketing. So, marketing intrinsically is just a communication tool. It’s a tool that businesses use to communicate. Just like people use our mouths to communicate, businesses use marketing to communicate about its products and services. The problem lies in how marketing is done, and one of the failures that I see businesses making on a regular basis is not knowing the difference between Good marketing and Bad marketing. It’s not your fault if you’re making some of these mistakes because they don’t teach all of this in school or as part of becoming a business owner. You’re focused on running your business. You’re not focused on what’s “good and bad marketing”. You just want to get the word out about your products and services.
There are a lot of factors that make up good marketing and bad marketing. Today I’m going to go over a few of those:
Good Marketing: One of the things that makes up good marketing is that it inspires people. It inspires you to take action, and it inspires you to be a part of something bigger than yourself.
Bad Marketing: Manipulates us. Makes us feel guilty, it makes us feel stressed or pressured.
Good Marketing: Starts with a Cause. Where we come from. Who we are. Why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Bad Marketing: Starts with a Goal. Ex: What are the sales figures we want to achieve this year?
Good Marketing: Speaks FOR us.
Bad Marketing: Speaks AT us.
Good Marketing: Drives loyalty. It makes people really want to be loyal to your company.
Bad Marketing: Drives transactions. Ex: Can we get the sales up? Let’s have more sales and more leads and more conversions.
So, really when you boil all these factors down and you look at the drivers between good vs. bad marketing, good marketing really boils down to Cause Marketing. It’s who you are and what you stand for.
What I recommend you do is you kind of step back and take sort of a 50-Foot view of who you are, what your business is, what it stands for, what Cause you believe in as a business. And then from there you can use that to put together your marketing plan and really drive these factors through your marketing.
Once you have the Cause down and you know your Why, the rest just falls right into place and becomes really easy. Not just for you and your employees to get behind, but for your customers and your prospects. And people will just naturally be drawn to you because you’re set apart in a league of your own; and then you don’t have to compete on price. You don’t have to compete on benefits or features. It’s all about just getting behind that Cause.