Marketing -- Concepts and History

Marketing Concept... #1

The Inside Reality

vs.

The Outside Perception

When the outside perception of your organization is an accurate reflection of an amazing inside reality, you can monopolize your marketplace.

Marketing effectively, whether it's hearing aids or anything else, requires you to focus on both sides of your business: the inside reality and the outside perception. We find that these two sides of the business are rarely aligned.

In fact, we venture to say that the crux of all of the problems of all businesses – including yours – related to this subject, can be wrapped up into one simple statement:

The "Outside Perception" of most companies is not an accurate reflection of their "Inside Reality".

What you need to do, first and foremost, is fix that problem.

Marketing Concept... #2

Marketing is communication.

It influences the outside perception.
It communicates the Inside Reality.

It is education.
It educates the buyers and makes them more confident.

That is… IF, …it’s done right!

The Three Purposes

Surprisingly few people can even tell you Marketing's purposes, let alone achieve these primary and critical objectives.

Marketing is supposed to do three things:

1. Capture the attention of your prospects. (Read about Capturing Attention here.)

2. Teach and train people how to make the best purchasing decision by giving them enough information to facilitate their making the best decision possible when buying what you have to sell. (Read about Facilitating the Buying Decision here)

3. Lower the risk of taking the next step in the buying process, so you can further educate them. (Read about Lowering Risk here)

Human nature demands that we always make the best decision possible.
Buyers want to have the unshakable confidence that they've made the right choice.

Your job is to help them do that.

Do Your Ads Do That?

To have a strong message get to your prospects, you must:

Have something good to say. (This is where the Inside Reality counts.) Improving Your Inside Reality

Say it well. (This is the part Good Marketing plays.) Being Clear and Believable

Say it often. (How to “Say It Often” is explained here.) Following up with them

Why Everything You've Learned In The Past, About Marketing Hearing Aids, Is Wrong.
You've been conditioned, to believe and practice, certain things about marketing and advertising hearing aids, that are all wrong – because, they can't grow your business.

What you've learned is wrong because it doesn't allow you to accurately, effectively, and succinctly portray your inside reality to the outside world. This is a product of years of conditioning to do Hearing Aid Marketing the wrong way.

You will come to understand how and why you've landed in this mess. You'll have a better appreciation for the problem as well as the solution to the problem, if you know why the problem exists in the first place. The history of marketing will give you some background for understanding.

Start your education with the history and follow the story to roots of the current situation.

Go to the "History of Marketing"

Marketing Concept... #3

Strategic Marketing vs. Tactical Marketing
Many people assume that, when you talk about marketing, you're talking about “Tactical Marketing” – placing ads, generating leads, sending out mailers, and implementing a follow-up system. They fail to realize that the strategic side – WHY you do what you do in your marketing, WHAT you say, and even HOW you say it – is always more important than WHEN and WHERE you say it.
So, what you say, how you say it, and to whom you say it is "Strategic Marketing" and WHERE you say it and WHEN you say it, is "Tactical Marketing" — what most people call "Advertising" — and the lesser in importance of the two.

Advertising or Tactical Marketing
Again, many people, when they hear that you're doing marketing, will say something like, "What kind of marketing are you doing?" or, "What kind of marketing do you do?"
When you ask, "What do you mean?" they say, "Do you do postcards?" or "Are you doing radio?"
They are thinking Advertising — Tactical Marketing.
I especially like when they say, "We tried postcards. They don't work."
They say it, as though, just by the fact that you send out the postcard, people should flock to your door. As though, it matters not what is on the postcard. …that anything you put out would work equally well.
Isn't that a ridiculous idea?
Absolutely!
Really, the only thing that matters is the "Strategic Marketing" — what you say on the postcard.

The Marketing Equation

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