When I first decided to build a AI-based marketing technology platform, I was completely and utterly sure that this was going to be the ride of my life. And it is. Without doubt, it is the best business adventure I have ever had, but it comes with a lot of work, a wild imagination and some technical jargon.

It's mid-way through February and many companies are looking for the secret sauce that this going to make this quarter and the next their biggest yet. You can drill it into your sales people and lure them with a carrot. Cutting costs is always a good way to increase your profits and of course there is marketing. Most marketing departments know what they need to do, but they don't always get around to doing it in the timeframe needed to reach the goals of a company.

As a 20-year entrepreneur, I have learned a few things over the years and some things I have had to learn repetitively until I 'got it'. Learning should be embraced they say, and I agree wholeheartedly but sometimes when you are in the thick of it, it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel let alone the 'why' you needed to learn that lesson again and again.

Over the past few months, Marketing Eye has hosted hundreds of marketing workshops. There have been many reasons for that, but mostly, companies are keen to start 2019 off strong. To do that, they need to get all of their key people in one room (or on one call) and go through their business objectives, sales goals and marketing activities for the year ahead.

Imagine your sales team sitting in your office discussing the reasons why they didn't make the sales projections for the last quarter. They talk about how hard they have worked, and that they think it is either bad time of year, or something has changed in the market. Furthermore, they say to you that they think your marketing is either not effective or worse, non-existent.

Every business needs a 'marketing eye', and with that comes the basics: a marketing strategy, a marketing implementation plan, analytics and KPI's and of course, results.

Reinventing your marketing team should be a thing that all companies do on a yearly basis. Keeping everyone on their toes, but more importantly encouraging everyone to stay relevant is critical to your company's success. If your marketing team doesn't have their heart in it and are not determined to be successful, then you may see that written in red in your balance sheet.

Like any company, we realise that reinventing yourself internally is the only way to keep people's jobs interesting. While many of us like routine, it's when this is turned upside down that we really put in our best performance. Just a few tweaks here and there, and all of a sudden you see things so much more differently than ever before.

When you have a business and realise that you are about to get to the next level, but need to hire a marketing manager first - you are on the money! You see, too often people that run businesses are so focused on sales, they are not thinking about marketing and brand. While it is true that a business cannot survive without sales, it is also accurate that without marketing, it is highly unlikely a business will reach the next level.

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is overlooking the importance of marketing.