Are You Practicing Meaningful Marketing Or Mindless Marketing?

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“Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter

In their book “Meaningful Marketing”, Doug Hall and Jeffrey Stamp lay out the differences between what they call ‘meaningful marketing’ and mindless marketing.

Meaningful marketing is a data-driven, analytical and methodical approach to getting the most from your marketing efforts while minimizing cost, effort and waste and maximizing sales, efficiency and long-term repeatable effectiveness.

Mindless marketing is that which causes you drop your prices at the whim of your customer, spend countless and unaccounted for dollars on promotions while hoping that customers respond differently to the same tired, repetitious messaging scheme.

How do determine if you’re doing “Meaningful Marketing”

  • Your marketing is actually useful in helping your customers make the best decision for their particular set of needs
  • Your marketing materials are 100% honest with no puffery
  • Your marketing is transparent and authentic and speaks with earned authority
  • Your marketing has FOCUS (target markets, message, what you sell and what you don’t sell)
  • All marketing is focused on customer acquisition and business growth (retention is a great goal too, but I simply call that ‘re-acquisition’)
  • Your marketing actually seeks to engage in a dialogue with customers rather than just ‘talk at them’ (think: blogging)
  • Your marketing seeks to fill a valid and well defined need rather than simply persuade a gullible customer into a one-time purchase

Watch out for these signs of “Mindless Marketing

  • You use sales & marketing gimmicks or tricks to capture interest
  • You don’t rely on the actual merits of your product/service to sell themselves and stand on their own
  • Your marketing is faddish or trendy and not part of an overall strategic plan
  • You have succumbed to ‘bright shiny object syndrome’ and are using the latest social media vehicles or other marketing tools without an understanding of how/why/what to expect them to do for you
  • Your marketing is focused on the transaction and not the relationship

At the end of the day, there’s no sense in marketing for the sake of marketing. It’s common sense really. As I was looking for some resources for a project recently, I found this quote from the government in one of the SBA marketing guides.

ALL company policies and activities should be aimed at satisfying customer needs, and PROFITABLE sales volume is a better company goal than maximum sales volume.

I would add that “ALL MARKETING activity should be focused on delivering a meaningful message and adding value during the prospect’s decision making process”.

Online Marketing Guide For Local Businesses

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Online marketing can be tough for local businesses. It seems almost like a new subject that was never taught in school. There are so many factors that play into it. If I’m interested in online marketing, as a local business, what does that entail? Do I just put up an ad in an online business directory? What if I don’t have a website? How can I make myself an online presence without knowing where to start? We can help you understand Total Syndication Marketing for starters.

There are a few tasks that a local business can set out to do right from the start, even without a website. There are some online business directories that allow you to customize your advertisement. You can create coupons, add pictures of your business, as well as write some background information about yourself and/or your business. This will allow you to have an online presence without even having a website. Now, this is not to say that you shouldn’t have a website and that this technology can replace the functionality of your website. Instead, it allows you to have a presence while developing your website.

Another task that a company might do is set up a blog for themselves. People love blogs! People want to connect with each other, including businesses, on a much more personal level. The plus side to this is that you don’t even have to go out and develop a blog site yourself, if you don’t want to. You can create a blog utilizing a template from someplace like WordPress. There are numerous sites that offer blog services/hosting. Once you’ve done some basic steps to set up your blog, it’s as easy as posting a note every day or so letting people know what you’re up to. You don’t need to be an accomplished writer to maintain the blog either. People want to connect with real people, and that means if you occasionally make a spelling error or grammatical error, all that does is humanize you even more!

These are just two of the many, many tasks that a local business can easily accomplish to get them started on the road to online marketing success. The list is endless. There are other tactics like video marketing, pay-per-click campaigns, participating in social marketing, and much more. Ultimately you achieve Toal Syndication. However, the key point is to start somewhere…anywhere. Learn what you can about one online marketing tactic that really interests you, implement your knowledge immediately, and then begin educating yourself about the next tactic that interests you. Online marketing is where everything is heading…it’s revolutionary in and of itself. The key to having a successful local business is learning how to keep up with the revolution.