Everything Is Marketing

If you're in business, you're in marketing.

Marketing can be defined as follows: Everything you do to get and keep customers.

The corollary is this: Everything you do is marketing.

Because everything you do every day can get and keep you more customers. If you do it right.

This concept of marketing includes:

• the first words on your web site;
• every word of every email you send;
• the packaging of everything you mail;
• the pictures of you and your staff in your marketing collateral;
• how you handle complaints and refund requests;
• the charities and non-profits you support;
• etc., etc., etc.

From the moment you walk into your office until quitting time, it's all marketing.

Challenge: Think of one thing you do every day that seems trivial. Then think of it as marketing.

Take voicemail, for example.

How can you treat your voicemail greeting like the marketing activity it really is, so that people calling your business after hours will be more eager to buy from you?

Voicemail marketing ideas:

• Write and practice a script for your voicemail greeting. The goal is not to read it word for word, but to avoid rambling.
• Stand up and smile when recording your voicemail greeting. When you do, your positive energy clearly comes through the phone. All things being equal, people prefer to buy from people who are friendly and positive.
• Give people a reason to leave their name and number. Offer them a discount code or the promise of a freebie -- when you call them back. This cuts down on hangups.

So: It's all marketing. Yet, you can't improve it all. Not in one day, anyway.

But you can pick one area of your business that's under-performing as a marketing function. And you can polish that one area until it brings in more revenue. Starting today.