The Watering Hole : Marketing Tips & Stories

I'm currently reading Rework, a book full of lessons and advice from Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson -- the founders of 37signals.

First of all, I highly recommend this book; it's entertaining, chock full of great advice and is a quick read. It's especially helpful to business starters/owners or people who some day dream of starting a business.

Now to the point: Last night I read a passage entitled "Marketing is not a department," that especially struck a chord, for me and for Addwater as a whole. The passage states that unlike accounting, marketing isn't a department. In fact, it's...

"Something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365. Just as you cannot not communicate, you cannot not market:

• Every time you answer the phone, it's marketing.
• Every time you send an e-mail, it's marketing.
• If you build software, every error message is marketing..."

And so the passage continues with examples of everyday, almost unconscious marketing. 

Addwater thinks of marketing in this same way, though less eloquently expressed in our hodge-podge of blog posts on how to empower your employees to market your business, or how customer service is the new marketing. What we mean to say is your employees are marketing, customer service is marketing. Everything is marketing!

We've seen it before -- a small business gets stuck on one element of their marketing and thinks it will make or break their marketing efforts. We have to remind them to step back, take a look at everything else they do and go from there.

One ad in the local newspaper won't guarantee life-long customers. Similarly, one unpopular ad in the newspaper won't make all your customers hate you.

It's never about each individual marketing tactic. It's about everything all together.

Have you read some thoughtful or insightful advice that you can relate to? Do share!