Marketing is hard work, or not?

Is marketing hardwork?

In a short answer, No.

But,

Oh yes there had to be a 'but'.

It requires persistence, dedication and time, and sometimes a long time to gain momentum.

Is this why many people give up? In a world where we expect everything now. Of course I have labelled this the NOW generation (I don't think I am alone here).

We have grown accustomed to having what we want now. The credit card and store credit allowed us into thinking that we can have what we want now, and sometimes this can be a good thing. However, in my opinion and this is only my opinion, I believe that as a society we have become complacent in striving for goals and working on what needs to be worked on in order to achieve what we desire. We are seeking that fulfilment of having achieved something without earning or working towards our end result or goal.

So where am I going with this?

Marketing.

We have all heard of the overnight success stories. And most of us want that too! And this does not necessarily relate to marketing ourselves or our book, but life, our goals and things that we would LOVE to have. They all need that time, patience, dedication and hard work. 

Marketing takes time, it also needs persistence but not in your face (although some advertising companies fail to recognise this), there is a difference between getting the word out there and being annoying.

Here's a story.
A local chicken shop close to where I live sold GREAT chicken and had all the right ingredients for a great shop. They lacked sales, and couldn't make the shop work. After a year they decided to sell.
Another shop owner thought she would take it on. "You're mad" was the response from several friends. She already had another shop and she wasn't interested in selling the other, she wanted the both to work.

She knew that she had the right stuff for the shop to work, but she needed customers. After one week she realised that she had to do something dramatic. Getting her younger brother she dressed him up in a Giant Big Bird outfit shoved a bunch of flyers in his hand, advertised in the local paper that Big Bird was in town. Making him walk the street handing out the flyers, other shop owners had even commented on Facebook about the Big Bird walking up and down the street. For two weeks the younger brother dressed up in the Bird outfit drumming up business.

A few weeks later a huge advertising piece was put in the paper connecting the big bird to the shop, another couple of weeks she ran a week of advertising on the local radio and a month after that flyers with menus were distributed in letterboxes.

It worked her business grew by three thousand percent, she was astonished, she knew that her campaign would drum up some business but was shocked by just how much.

She then told me that it wasn't the big bird suit alone, it was the whole thing together that really made the difference, "we persisted at marketing the big bird theme, we only had the costume for two weeks and we had to stretch it out for as long as possible to make the most of the big bird suit".

I thought it was clever the way she went about it, she hit them with something the people would remember, (it's not everyday Big Bird walks up and down your main street) and then reminded people where to buy their hot chickens, at Big Bird's place.

I hope this story inspired you to help market whatever it is you need to market.

Remember, marketing is not hard. It just requires persistence, dedication and continual work.

Good Luck with it all.

B.