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It’s Only Common Sense: 10 Lousy Reasons Not to Market Your Company

There has never been a better or more important time to market. Why would so many companies rather drink poison than market? Why will most companies do anything but market themselves? I just don’t get it, especially now when we cannot even visit customers.

All the companies that have been marketing for years are doing very well. Three that I know of are almost over-sated with business right now, and none of their salespeople have made a live sales call since March. Another company I work with has gone on a full-scale marketing binge and has doubled its sales since September of last year—and that’s during a pandemic, for heaven’s sake. Yet so many people still stick to their beliefs that marketing doesn’t work for them. Oy vey!

The sad thing is that so many of these companies have great stories to tell; they are building great products and delivering them on time, every time, and assume that “if you build it, they will come.” But especially now, when many of their customers are suffering and not booking as much business, these companies’ sales are down. This is a time when they need to acquire new customers, but they are not getting out there to do the work. No one can find them. Today, with many people working from home and using the internet as a resource, good companies must make sure that they are online and that they will show up on Google searches. You must be “findable.”

Over the years, I have jotted down some of the more prevalent, and sometimes creative, reasons that people will tell me for why they don’t need to market their company:

1. We have all the business we need. There is no reason at all to market our company. What are we going to do with more business?
2. It doesn’t work. We tried it once. We put an ad in a magazine for a month and never got a single order. The same thing happened when we sent out one newsletter; again, nothing happened.
3. We build great products. They’re so good that people come to see us, so there’s no need to do anything else.
4. I hate commercials, and I am not going to pay for any of my own.
5. Business is down right now. I need to wait for things to get better, and then I will consider doing some marketing.
6. Once the shop is running perfectly, I’ll do some marketing and advertising.
7. I’m too busy with the business I have already to even think about marketing right now.
8. Nobody else in my business is doing any marketing, so why should I?
9. The only companies that need marketing are the ones with lousy products. I have great products, so I don’t need marketing.
10. There is something that sounds so desperate about marketing and pushing your company, so I don’t want any part of it.

And one more, in the spirit of under-promising and over-delivering. This is my personal favorite: "We don’t market or advertise in our business. Frankly, I consider it cheating. We should be able to do business and win business on our own merit."

Really? Yes, that’s what they said. The most intriguing thing is that more than one company has said this. Many years ago, when a company started sending out postcards with per-layer pricing, many people yelled, “Foul!” saying that these were unfair business practices. It was as if we were in the medical or legal profession—my, how this has changed! But that was how companies in our industry thought back then, and many of them have not changed a bit. That might be why we have gone from 1,500+ PCB shops to less than 200.

But let’s end on a good note because during these challenging times the companies that pay attention to marketing and have been kicking up their marketing efforts through this pandemic are seeing results for their efforts. They are growing, picking up new customers at a rapid pace, and succeeding.

Lest we forget, they are also working very hard on their marketing. They are coming up with new and innovative ways to get their names out there not only through advertising, but also by publishing books, offering technical webinars, and sending out newsletters and sales flashes. And they are doing it with professionalism and consistency while offering their customers and prospective customers important and valuable content. They are creating a great company reputation and brand, and you need to do it, too.

If you have made any of the statements listed above, then you should be embarrassed to the point of making a change in the way you think and start treating marketing with the respect it demands.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.