What do you want from my blogs?

This is a relatively new exercise for me to have my own blog although I blog or respond regularly on Ecademy.

Since this is my blog, or rather yours as well, and thus ours, I think that its a good idea to ask the audience what sort of things they want from this blog.

After all, Marketing 101 says that marketing should be customer focused!

So, what do you want from this blog site?

Discussion on Marketing issues?
Access to Marketing Advice or Services?
Updates on Marketing legislation?
Wide reach RSS feeds targeted at Marketing issues and information?
Something else?

Let me know and I'll get it on!

Regards - Maurice

What is Marketing really about?

I'm fed up with meeting SME's and indeed others who imagine that they know all there is to know about marketing without ever having studied it and at best having perhaps read a book or done a 2 day course!

My view is that Real Marketing involves rather more than just promotions which is what many seem to equate to marketing.

I think that despite what many think, Marketing is a much bigger topic than just Advertising or even promotions. I promote and offer Real Marketing

What do I mean by Real Marketing?

Real marketing is not simply about promotion let alone just advertising and possibly PR (itself often perceived as free advertising - As if Editors were not wise to that idea!).
It is actually a 'Strategic Management Discipline' (Source - CIM, Harvard BS, Henley College, Ashridge, MBS, LSE and others) and should be at the centre of everything an organisation does to do its business now and for the future.

It is an ongoing, continuous, process that is part of the fabric of your business day to day, not something you do as a one off project or only when the bank manager asks what you are doing

Real Marketing encompasses at least 5 areas and how those areas interact. These are: -

Sales (Yes, this is a subset of Marketing not the other way round)
Promotions (We do this as well as, not instead of)
Finance (Pricing, yield, profit, revenue flow, ROI and 'Will we make any money doing this?')
Research and Development (What are we going to make money out of once the market for what we are doing now declines)
Distribution (What's the point of making, promoting and selling something if the customers cannot get their hands on it in the right quantity, at the time that they want it, and where they want to buy it from)

Real Marketers not only deal with all of the above but also with how each area interacts with all of the others and not just once but all of the time, in an environment where everything changes constantly and there are no hard and fast rules to follow.

Real marketers also need crystal balls because future gazing and a 360-degree vision of their environment, past, present & future, also comes with the turf. Add in SWOT, PEST, and BCG analysis and it might just be that specialist help can make a big difference to your business.
Organisations frequently believe that they cannot afford to do all of the above. I suggest that, for long-term survival, they cannot afford not to.

That's my view but what do others think? How do we marketers get the great uninformed to talk with and listen to to us so that they can do it better?

Regards - Maurice