subject: Understanding How Marketing Has Changed - This is Crucial For Small Business Success [print this page] Understanding How Marketing Has Changed - This is Crucial For Small Business Success
That statement has become synonymous with being put into new situations where we're not entirely comfortable and we're not familiar with the landscape. That's exactly where small business owners find themselves in today's culture and economy - in unfamiliar territory. I want to help you develop a new marketing mindset that will help insure your success as a small business owner.
Marketing is NOT the same thing as advertising, although they're related.
The definition of marketing has changed from "strategies and tactics that move people to purchase a product or service," to this:
"Marketing consists of the strategies and tactics used to identify, create and maintain satisfying relationships with customers that result in value for both the customer and the marketer."
People Are Talking!
Notice the difference - we can no longer be focused just on making sales and meeting quotas. We MUST take care to keep the customer. The keywords here are long-term and relationship. Why is this true? Because people are TALKING! The rise of social media networking has given people a voice as never before. The average American is no longer just a consumer of information - with just a click of the mouse, he's a publisher of information, including his opinions of who he does business with. We must understand this!
Surveys tell us that more than 60% of people now say their most credible source of information about a company and its products is "a person like me." The trust level for peers has skyrocketed in the past few years. More than 80% of people say they will not buy goods or services from a company they do not trust.
Traditional advertising just pushed information in one direction - from the company doing the advertising to the public. It has been called interruptive advertising. Companies constantly looked for ways to interrupt Joe Public with messages on TV, radio and in print, to try to get him to think about something else.
A Two-Way Street
The internet "superhighway" has now become a two-way street - with lots of exits and cafes and coffee shops along the way - for CONVERSATION.
So, it's important that you get all the help you can to understand how to connect with your potential clients and customers today. I invite you to visit http://www.businesstrainingteam.com/ to watch some free videos about social media marketing and small business success. Don't forget to look for the free eBook on the Home Page - it's entitled Local Business Marketing on the Internet.
