“Let's start at the very beginning

A very good place to start
When you read you begin with
A-B-C
When you sing you begin with do-re-mi
Do-re-mi
Do-re-mi

The first three notes just happen to be
Do-re-mi
Do-re-mi

Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti”

--Richard Rogers from the Musical and Film The Sound of Music

As I was thinking about marketing and where we should start, this song popped into my head. I can’t think of a better place to start than the beginning. Even if you have a marketing program that has been working for you, it never hurts to look at your process or incorporate ideas which will make improvements. What you will discover is that having a marketing process like the one we are about to discuss is a lot like this song. If your process is working correctly, you will always start and end with Do, yourself as a freelance designer or your firm.

Like other business owners, we are very good at starting. When we start our business, we have this vision that once we have built a better mousetrap, clients will show up in droves, pushing and shoving to get in our door. It doesn’t take long for us to figure out that this is not the case. We have to learn to keep the song going, to bring ourselves back to Do. It’s not easy. Many of us find that it is so hard to get new work in while turning current work out. Some of us live in fear, and perhaps well we should, that one day we will come out from behind our monitors or get up from our desks and there will be no more work.

Our focus in these sessions will be how we can continue the song, taking the necessary steps Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do. One of the hardest things you must learn in business is that you cannot stop when you get to Ti. You must start again to keep growing and going. You will go back to Do many times throughout the life of your business. Be aware that clients are progressing through the cycle at different times and at different intervals within the cycle. The challenge becomes keeping the cycle and clients going where ever they are within the marketing process. It takes commitment and flexibility. Having a process makes marketing your business simpler. It helps you focus. Most of all it helps you serve your clients.

View Full Image

Now, let’s start at the very beginning. Let us first discuss what marketing is.

When I asked this group to define marketing without looking it up, I received some varied and well-thought out answers. Would it surprise you to learn that no one actually nailed it? Marketing is a function of business and its relatives Finance, Operations, Human Resources, Information Technology, and others work together to make the business a success or don’t work together to produce a failure.

View Full Image

Marketing includes many subordinate functions which you can see in the diagram above. Please note that you will not find all of the subordinate functions shown above in every business. For example, a service business will most likely not need packaging or distribution, but a service business does need Promotion, Public Relations, Advertising and Sales, all functioning under the banner of Marketing. What would your business look like if diagramed this way? Have you ever sketched out an organizational chart for yourself? As you know, you can make discoveries when you sketch. Even if your business is comprised only of you, sketch it out and list your business functions. Have you ever thought about Finance, for example, as a function? How is it structured? Chances are you haven’t although chances are you will think about finance before you think about marketing. We all like to be able to eat with the lights on, don’t we?

One of the problems in defining marketing is that people often confuse it with sales. Sales in fact, is a sub-function of marketing. Sales is the subordinate function with which we are most familiar, so it is no surprise that people use the terms interchangeably. Marketing activities support sales efforts. Oftentimes, marketing activities must occur before a sale can be made; they sometimes follow the sale as well, to pave the way for future sales and referrals. Sales is only one note in the marketing tune.

Marketing is the beginning of your “Fa.” As I stated, we’re very good at getting started (Do). We take a lot of time figuring out what services to offer (Re). Often, we even take considerable time figuring out what to call ourselves (Mi). After we get these three pieces, we open up shop. Either because we don’t know how or we don’t know we should, many of us don’t bother to take the next steps to get new leads, attract new clients and continue to service your existing client base.

Over the next week get yourself a notebook for these informal marketing sessions. Also, I’d like for you to think about and make note of the ways in which you have already tried to market your services or the services of your firm. The word “you” and “your” used below should be interpreted as “your firm” if you are currently working for an entity other than yourself or if your company is more than one person.

1) Look over your client list. Can you divide your client list into market segments? What market segments do you or does your firm currently serve? What market segments to you or your firm wish to serve?

Market segmentation is the process of grouping a market into smaller subgroups. This is not something that is arbitrarily imposed on society: it is derived from the recognition that the total market is often made up of submarkets (called segments). These segments are homogeneous within (i.e. people in the segment are similar to each other in their attitudes about certain variables). Because of this intra-group similarity, they are likely to respond somewhat similarly to a given marketing strategy. That is, they are likely to have similar feelings about a marketing mix comprised of a given product or service, sold at a given price, distributed in a certain way, and promoted in a certain way.

2) What subordinate functions of marketing are you currently using and how often are they used? Do you firm advertise? If so where and how frequently?

3) Do you use PR? In what ways? How frequently?

4) What about promotions? What types of activities? How frequently?

5) What is your role in the marketing of the services? Do you have a marketing role?

6) Do you use press releases? Under what circumstances? How often?

© Copyright 2005 Lisa Duty