Blog Author Mellissah Smith - Page 32

A year or so back, one of the Marketing Eye interns set up an Instagram account for the office dog, Pippa Smith. As interns do, they didn't give us the password and possibly had their own email address attached to it, so we were never able to retrieve it again.

Then a staff member decided that everyone loved her so much, that they wanted to set up an instagram account - and not give me the passwords. It was quite funny at the time, as they dressed her up and took the most adorable pictures. Like a true professional, Pippa Smith just stood there and looked at the camera.

The world works in wonderful ways, and quite often we don’t even realise it.

We were all meant to be doing the things we are doing, for the time we are doing it. That is a fact.

Startups are hard work, require a lot of resilience and often are flawed with the fact that many are not adequately funded to a) hire the right people b) to marketing the business c) to have the infrastructure in place for growth.

One of the biggest misconceptions that business owners have it is that if they have a marketing strategy developed, all of a sudden, overnight, an influx of leads will come through the door.

It's hard running a business, and even harder to manage the fact that many entrepreneurs and CEO's want everything 'yesterday' and are impatient by nature. That same impatience often makes them very success, as does their attention to detail, but when it comes marketing, unless you have an unlimited budget, it is impossible to be an overnight success.

As an owner of an agency, I know this thought process too well.

It takes a good 20 to 40 hours minimum to write a marketing strategy, and that is after research and a 4-hour workshop. To expect that to be finished overnight in itself is impossible and would be only at the determent of the client. No-one is that good, that innovative and creative to put their knowledge into a strategy that is campaign driven to drive leads. No-one. We could put 20 people on the one strategy and it still would not be right after a week - and that is fact.

I come up with my best ideas away from the office. Not sitting at my desk under pressure.

At my age, I have seen a lot and in the past six months, I have had two friends die from drug overdoses. They were hugely successful in their careers, and no-one saw it coming. Perhaps they were accidental overdoes, or maybe they chose this path, but it begs the question - what responsibility do we have as friends, family and employers of people who are suffering from addiction, anxiety and depression?

It's not in your imagination, but marketing your business is getting a whole lot harder. What was once an easy to achieve goal, is now polluted by too many choices for both your customer and yourself, in the marketing mix.

As a customer, it is confusing and very few companies have fine-tuned the art of simple. We all learn at University to "Keep It Simple Stupid" - the KISS principal, but too many of us have forgotten that and perhaps we no longer believe it to be relevant. I do. Confusing the client, and our clients confusing their customers is a huge mistake and only when a customer identifies this do they start the breakthrough to achieving their next step towards achieving their ultimate marketing goal.

When you spend years soul searching, trying to figure out why God put you on this planet and what you are meant to do with your time, you can falter in a lack of understanding.

Mostly, the lack of understanding is of who you really are, and what is your purpose. Many people espouse to know what their purpose is, but how many of those same people can put their hand on their hearts and say, that this is why they were put on earth, and follow through with that mission until the very end?

Yesterday, I had the privilege of speaking to one of the most inspiring leaders in the world, Ad Nederlof, from Vanad Group, headquartered in Rottterdam in the Netherlands.

Marketing Eye has for years focused on the small to medium sized business market. We have done incredibly well specialising in providing businesses that are looking to catapult their business growth by providing them with a qualified outsourced marketing department.

When we look closely at our workplace, we realize that to be successful, employees don't necessarily need to work 8 hours a day. In fact, no employee ever does. Their billable hours range quite low and in most cases less than 50% of the time.