Is This Marketing?
Last year, someone asked me what I’d chosen for the company Christmas cards (I was relatively newly self-employed at the time). The idea of company Christmas cards had not even crossed my mind, but that conversation stayed with me and this winter, I picked a photo I took last winter, and uploaded it to moo.com, producing this:
I mostly do business with clients in the same country as me, so it’s no hassle to include the people I’ve enjoyed doing business with this year in the christmas-card-writing routine. I’m mildly alarmed that this activity might qualify as “marketing” which somehow rings of ridiculous, contrived inventions by people employed entirely to miss the point! Hopefully it’s not too corporate though, it’s been a good year and I quite like to keep in touch with people.
So – it’s that time of year and I’m off to fill my fountain pen and sit down to write those cards … I did indulge in some tiny lornajane-branded stickers though, to save having to lick the envelopes :)
I think marketing gets a bad rap because of bad marketing, just as PHP gets a bad wrap because of bad PHP. Good marketing is good.
I must have Christmas on my mind. Can you change wrap to rap? :-)
Sorry, it made me smile too much for me to want to change it :)
I think as, Chris said, we tend to stereotype particular disciplines either because of our dislike of common problems within them or because we don’t feel comfortable with saying we do some of that type of work.
Marketing is anything you communicate to your clients, in any method. Which means, when you call your clients to ask questions or just to check in, it’s an extension of your marketing. It’s painting the picture of who you are as a vendor and helps define the level of conversation your clients can have with you.
So, don’t feel bad that you are doing marketing. Feel great cause you are doing personal, tangible marketing that your clients will relate to and helps build a bond between the two of you.