A car, a taxi, a plane, a boat and a walk. Ten hours of travel. ‘Six o’clock. Eight metres. In the sedge. A Lighter Spotted  Siberian Warbler.’ TICK. Ten hours ten minutes later they are Home, one bird up, £300 down and ready for the next call.

It is an irony that too often these very tired birds rarities (although possibly as common as a Sparrow in Mongolia), perish of fright with seventy telescopes homed in on them ever closer. No bodyguards for these Celebs from this unlikely paparazzi.

The hunt is a primeval urge in us. Stamp collectors and train spotters are similarly addictive number quests. But how shallow and dangerous is the numbers game? What is the chase for numbers achieving?

By its very nature, a number chase is a narrow chase. It has no time for developing relationships or affinities. The satisfaction of a gain is all too quickly banked and forgotten in favour of the next. A little like gambling – another numbers game. The cost of ticking off that one bird for a moment’s satisfaction makes a poor ratio of effort versus result. Like the young stud accumulating bed notches, every conquest merely returns one to the starting line so there is no journey to be lapped.

Yesterday was Armistice Day. I find The Two Minute silence difficult to fill. The numbers of dead in The First World War are too colossal to comprehend so the mind struggles to relate. I try and imagine just one of those numbers as a person (as I have known no war dead). Just one person can fill hours of time, let alone two minutes. One seventeen year old’s death. His life lost, his Mother weeping, his Father spending the rest of his days an alcoholic. His life lost for no purpose. But 100,000 lives? The mind has no grip on that. It numbs.

Numbers are dangerous. They are lifeless and flat. They exclude love, bonding, loyalty and learning. Never forget the moment the Jewish face became a Jewish number in WW2, humanity was abandoned. Numbers are volatile, misleading and inevitably lead to a state of futile flux. Like the ‘Grand Old Duke of York, who had 10,000 men, he marched them to the top of the hill and he marched them down again. When they were up they were up, when they were down they were down. When they were only half way up they were neither up nor down’. Who cares?

Successful marketing is about building and growing real relationships. It is about listening, relating and understanding. The birdwatcher who provides a wonderful garden habitat is rewarded with loyal birds he comes to know and enjoy. He will be happier than the birdwatcher blindly trampling habitats to chase a number. And so it is with business. A business that creates common ground with their target audiences and studies, interacts and nurtures, is building a loyalty and a recognition which creates reward and long term sustainable value.

Matthew Rymer

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