Are you REALLY leveraging the power of marketing?

It’s kind of an obvious question, but a good one to ask yourself from time to time: "Am I really leveraging the power of marketing?"

Before you answer with a dismissive “duh!” keep in mind that I wouldn’t be asking it if wasn’t a common problem. Many small businesses focus on the blocking and tackling of sales and apply few resources to marketing. In other cases, businesses focus on generating business from referrals, but only put a passing interest into marketing.

We get it. Sales is a numbers game and you can have confidence that the more you invest in sales, the more you’ll make. The only problem with sales is that it is a 1-to-1 activity. Marketing, on the other hand, is a 1-to-many activity – as well as a strong way to build brand – and so good marketing will drive up your sales yield (more sales per dollar of sales labor). That's why I have a lug wrench image associated with this post: if you try to break the torque on a lug nut with your hand, it's almost impossible. Put the same amount of effort into a lug wrench, though, and the nut moves easily.

Personally, I love the activity of sales much more than I like the activity of marketing, but it’s my marketing (e.g. posts like this one ) that gets me quite a few of those sales calls and helps prospects learn more about me.
 
Make sure your company is investing wisely in both marketing and sales.
 
Go get 'em.

Ingar