Wrong Place To Start...

A friend of mine who is a fledgling real estate agent, has recently confided to me his thoughts on how he should be marketing himself. “Alex,” says he, “I think I need to advertise on the TV. See, paper advertising is dead.”

He was excited I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was making a mistake, and if I did he wouldn’t understand me then. (I simply imvited him to my marketing workshop and sent to him some information on other people in his industry whom he should model his business after.)

Now, his mistake wasn't really about TV vs space advertising vs Yellow Pages vs whatever. The mistake was, he was starting in the wrong place! And so do many other entrepreneurs – both fledgling and veterans. Here’s what I mean.

The “Three M” marketing formula is:

Market -> Message -> Medium

Your starting point should always be defining who your prospective customers are (gender, age, profession, income, hobbies, family status, ethnic background, etc.) The better you define the market the greater your marketing (and business) success will be. Most importantly, all these people (or companies, if you’re b2b) should have common “pains” that you need to identify. That’s the first “M” in the formula.

The next step is the message. What do you say to this market? Which particular “pain” do you solve? That’s the second “M”.

And now only the third, and the last “M” is the medium. Which medium (or media) should you use to deliver your message to your target market in the most effective and efficient way? Whichever media you pick, the message should be constructed and delivered in such a way so as you could measure how much business – in dollars and cents – you get per each $100 spent on advertising in each medium.

Where most people get it wrong is they start with the medium whereas it really should be the last step in their marketing plan.

Don’t take this formula lightly. It’s simple to understand but requires work (== thinking) to actually follow it. It’s a lot easier to say “Oh, this medium is not working, let’s try that one.” 99 times out of 100, the medium is not the real problem. It’s either the market or the message. Or both!

Go back and do the homework. Don’t cut corners and business success will find you.

Promise.

P.S.: As for my friend, it’s been a couple of months since that conversation and he has never brought up this subject since. I think I can hear gears turning in his head.