Where does marketing start?
In this era of Ping, Ning, Twitter and Flickr you might be forgiven for thinking that we have a new paradigm.
Social media, the Internet and mobile communications are making the transfer of information so fluent, so easy that it somehow relegates some of the basics of marketing.
I remember one of my lecturers Peter Betts (Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester Business School), a really gifted lecturer, ask, “where does you marketing start?”
His answer was with the first person you come into contact with at an organisation, probably the receptionist.
That was the mid 90s and yes for many people a first experience of an organisation might well be online now. It might be an unguarded comment on a blog or someone else’s comment about your organisation on a Google search.
What I am saying is that in any organisation the guardian of the company’s reputation is not just the PR professional, it is everyones.
Reputation is a central component of a business and without a decent reputation it is hard to trade. So before thinking it is just media relations it is worth looking at all points of contact.
Tags: Marketing, Social media