An infection clamped beneath that molar with nowhere to go shakes the very foundations of your jaw and teeth. That innocent tooth, which has taken years to grow and countless tubes of toothpaste, will probably have to be removed. An infection at the core – at the nerve ending – can destroy all you have grown.

If your marketing strategy is infected with poor information, it will eventually destroy everything you proceed to develop. As any good dentist will say, prevention is better than cure. Although I believe my dentist, Malvern’s Chris Bocking, is the world’s best, I would not hesitate to agree!

Solid information provides sound roots from which a successful marketing campaign can grow. Without this, you risk infection and a costly extraction.

Decisions over potential opportunities, target market selection, market segmentation, planning and implementing marketing programmes, marketing performance, and control should all be underpinned by market research.

These decisions are complicated by interactions between the controllable marketing variables of product, pricing, promotion, and distribution. Further complications are added by uncontrollable environmental factors such as general economic conditions, technology, public policies, competitor activity, and social and cultural changes.

As if this does not provide enough headaches, we need to add to the mix the complexity of consumers. Relevant information can at least help us more reliably predict consumers’ response to marketing initiatives.

I am not arguing that marketing is a complete science. I would not be so passionate about marketing if it was. However, these are essential questions to ask before committing to any marketing campaign:

Your Customers
What are their locations, age, gender, buying behaviours and motivations?

Competitor information
Do you know their identities, marketing strategies and customer relationships?

Product information
How do your customers talk about your brand, products and service and likely impact of technology developments?

Industry information
What is the big picture? What are the future demand and supply trends and patterns?

Competitive opportunities
What are the under-served consumer segments and unmet consumer needs?

Qualitative research using depth interviews, focus groups, surveys, field tests and observations, supported by primary research yielding new, relevant and specific information will answer the above questions.

The Value of The Smile
I write this from a hotel near our Romanian office where the staff appear friendly and smiling. Last week I stayed at London’s Soho Hotel (a converted multi storey carpark!) where the staff were also exceptionally happy. It seems a rarity in hotels these days, but smile and world smiles with you.  It costs nothing and is a great marketing tool! And lest we forget, a good smile requires healthy teeth!

Matthew Rymer, Managing Director, The Marketing Farm Limited

We will analyse the very earth (or essence) of your brand proposition. We will recommend measures to prevent contamination, and offer fresh ideas for brand growth. These will be suited to the climate of your marketplace, the nutrients you have available, and the vast crop of marketing techniques and technologies now available.

Attraction is in the suggestion, not the obvious. When we flirt with the opposite sex,  we are tantalizing, exciting, challenging and inviting a response. We are certainly not baring all!

Generating successful media interest in a product, service or business reflects the very best of a successful flirt.  The moment a press release joins all the dots and tells the story it is doomed. It will be too long, too opinionated, too obvious and too advertorial. The best press release pinpoints seductive facts and suggests investigation and exploration.

If you had a six pack or a rather ample bosom, you would not bare it and label it (at least, I would rather hope you would not!)?  However, your sense of fashion might suggest it. Ask any copywriter or journalist for a little advice and more often or not, they will advise you to write, then shorten it, then shorten it further and then condense it.

We just staged the initial, and regional launch, for our client The Pembrokeshire Pasty & Pie Co. They are opening a small pasty and pie shop in Tenby on 1st March. Our release was short but signposted the greater story. Within 24 hours, it was headline news across Wales – on radio, TV and in the press. The Pembrokeshire Pasty is to battle The Cornish. Every paper picked up on two lines in our background notes: that the Pembrokeshire Pasty recipe might have been invented to feed the workers building St David’s Cathedral in 1181. Had that been our headline, it would have been questioned. As an understated possibility, it was not. There is certainly circumstantial evidence to suggest this is true, but no hard evidence as yet. That is the successful flirt.

Media relations excites me. The journalists, freelancers, producers, researchers and editors all want a story and I strongly believe there is a story behind every business. Just akin to flirting – everyone can attract someone.

And So To The Marriage!

Now, onto the inevitable consequence of successful flirting… Marriage! I believe too many businesses struggle alone. In these difficult economic times, there is more reason than ever to look for strategic alliances (marriages!) for the greater success. There was recently an article in The Sunday Times exposing a well known author for plugging a rather delightful holiday resort in her latest novel in exchange for a rather expensive holiday.  As the publishing world reduces advances and prepares for the ebook revolution, authors will increasingly look to manage their own affairs more acutely. Her novel will be judged on its merits. Why promote a resort by accident when one can create a viable alliance?

Small town shopkeepers are suffering more than most in this current climate. More than once, I have seen a pair of neighbouring shops – both suffering – and wondered if they knocked out a side door they could reduce and share staff costs. We may regard ourselves as a nation of small shopkeepers, but I do wonder whether our lack of community spirit reflects itself in business too?

I challenge any business to look again and ask themselves: Who can we ally with? To share customer databases, to endorse each other and to generate news stories, profit share and piggy back exposure?

A successful business may flirt with and marry as many as they are able to. So why be celibate?!

Matthew Rymer