‘Marketing’s a waste of time, most of our business comes from referrals.’

‘We tried local papers, flyers and other stuff, but we’ve never seen a long-term result.’

‘I get fed up with people telling me I need the latest marketing fad.’

Every SME has its own story about why they’ve given up on marketing. But is marketing really the problem?

According to Barclays only 25% of SMEs have a business plan. If there’s no plan, how can there be a marketing strategy to support it? Marketing becomes about tactics and measuring awareness and not impact. No wonder it doesn’t work.

And it’s all about protecting and developing income. But how good is the process for converting presence into interest, leads into sales? Or converting new customers into repeat ones?

Effective market operations stop you leaving business on the table and ensure you see a return on your marketing spend. Get it right and maybe you really won’t really even need as much marketing – because you can generate so much added value from existing customers.