Intro to CommonSense Marketing

60% of consumers have a negative or less than positive attitude towards marketing and advertising than a few years ago

60% of them feel as though marketing and advertising is out of control

2/3rds feel bombarded with too many messages

Over half said that spam had turned them off to all forms of advertising

60% feel that most marketing has very little relevance to them

2/3rds are concerned about the practices of marketers

61% don't feel that advertisers/marketers treat them with respect

Source: Yankelovich Partners Apr 2004 (www.yankelovich.com)


If that's the consumer market, what does that say for the even-more-savvy business to business market?

Let's face it in today's environment there are more companies, producing more messages, to more prospects than ever before.

And people are getting tired of it, suspicious of it, oblivious to it and down-right fed up with it.

I've spent the last 15 years working in advertising and marketing from Advertising Agency to Marketing & Web Consultancy to Marketing and CRM Manager to Head of Marketing.

And you know what? I'm kinda getting frustrated with it too!

Frustrated by the fact that much of the marketing these days has lost it's way. That too many companies are trying to 'sell' poor quality products to people they know really don't need it. That companies are ignoring the needs of the very people they're trying to pursuade to buy their products. That there's too much of a 'just grab the cash and forget about everything else' attitude. That even if businesses genuinely have a good product or service, they still mistakenly go down well-trodden marketing paths that don't deliver the results they really need because they're not addressing the issues they really need to.

It's not that marketing is no longer effective. It's that current marketing strategies are based on a marketplace that's not what it used to be and are being driven by too many internal factors other than the one real thing they should be being based on - your prospects!

It's being led by numbers, by statistics, by budgets, by targets, by a 'we've got a product, let's sell it' attitude, rather than by a focus on what REALLY matters to an individual who's looking (or even doesn’t realise that they need) to solve a problem.

Everyone talks a good game. They 'say' they look after customers. They say they understand their customers and what they want, they say they develop products that work. They say they spend time and money developing ads that 'sell their products'. They say……..

But you know what? Do you ever get the feeling that there's something fundamentally missing from all this activity? Do you ever feel that that's just all it is - talk? That no matter what they say they do, that they don't really 'believe' in what they're doing or 'practice what they preach' ? That it's just not getting the desired results? That it's not quite 'hitting the spot' so to speak?

Well let me tell you know - It doesn’t have to be this way!

Marketing is in fact - really simple. I mean REALLY simple. It shouldn't really be called marketing at all because essentially it's as simple as having a business providing a product that somebody realises they need and is willing to pay for it. If the basic premis is right, everything else falls into place with a minimum of effort.

Wouldn't you like to come across as being the kind of company that people would like to do business with, fairly and honestly, for a fair price, knowing that they're going to get a good deal and want to come back for more?

Rather than being a company that's eyed with suspicion by your prospects or even worse, totally ignored?

Commonsensemarketing is an attempt to discuss how going back to the basics of what marketing is actually all about, can have far more impact than the complicated, overly scientific and overly hyped kind of marketing activity that seems to prevail in today's business.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE (the old 'K.I.S.S' adage), KEEPING IT RELEVANT and most of all KEEPING IT COMMON SENSE