Total Marketing Solutions

A common trap that many SMEs fall into is getting ’stuck into’ doing stuff (in this case marketing activity) before they are really ready, before they have a clear plan of what they want to achieve and why. It is the nature of entrepreneurs to want to get on with it as it - provides a sense of progress and achievement - experience tells us that you have to get ready before you ‘engage’ with your market if you don’t want to be disappointed with the results.

Unfortunatley we find that the majority of marketing agencies do not support this process of getting ready before you go to market particularly well. There are honorable exceptions of course and as usual it is dangerorous to generalise but more often than not the planning element of most traditional marketing agencies has a tendancy to be focused on the execution elements of marketing communications; be it advertising, PR, design, telemarketing, DM or print – in our view this is the easy bit! The difficult bit is getting your thinking sharp and clear about your whole marketing and customer proposition before you get into execution mode.

 Our experience of working with SMEs from all walks of industry tells us that better business results will always be delivered if you take a step back, develop a clear, well thought-through marketing strategy and then support this strategy with a robust and rigorously executed activity plan.
 

Preparation before engagement goes along way to delivering success in marketing as it does in rugby.