Marketing is Like Pizza
Some people (and companies) think marketing is like a great four star meal: pricey, and hopefully you get your money’s worth.
I disagree. Marketing is like pizza: there’s an option for everyone.
Gourmet. You decide to go for that gourmet, high-end pizza everyone is talking about. You have the money and you’re willing to spend it. But then again, it is pizza.
Similarly, you can certainly spend a lot of money on great, effective marketing. And if you have the budget available, the right marketing programs can generate quality leads for the top of the sales funnel. You can also have a fabulous booth and attend the hottest and largest trade shows.
Neighborhood Pizza. OK, you really don’t want to go for the $20 fig-and-prosciutto pizza. You just want a hot, well-made, quality, old-school pepperoni pizza.
Your marketing approach would be to have a small marketing staff, and hire outsourced consultants to fill the gaps and help your marketing department achieve its goals.
Take-out. Take -out pizza combines the flavor and convenience of the neighborhood pizza place without the added cost of wait service, beverages, parking, baby sitters and other add-on expenses.
A small marketing staff with a small budget can still get the desired results. It requires making the right decisions about spend and resources, and a little more work than other options, but in the end, it’s still a great approach to marketing.
Make it Yourself. OK, you don’t want to spend money on pizza. You decide homemade pizza is fine. Nope, you don’t have the San Marzano tomatoes used by the local place. The cheese isn’t the freshest. But you get your pizza and it doesn’t cost you anything.
But wait. At some point you paid for those ingredients. Your pizza is not costing you anything today, but at some point you did spend money on it. You just think you didn’t.
The “homemade pizza” approach to marketing is the equivalent of hiring interns (or Twinterns) to use social media to market your products or services. Interns are free. Facebook and Twitter are free. So marketing costs nothing.
Think about that homemade pizza. At some point you paid for it.
Free interns and free social media? At what point will you pay for that?
