Menu
Log in

bring your ideas to life

Log in

Is More Marketing What You Really Need? 

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas 

As the debate about when and how to restart our economy begins, our small businesses, and big ones too, will be clamoring to market their goods and services to us hoping to regain some of the business lost during the pandemic. We should use this time to start thinking about ways to distinguish our businesses from our competitors and really make ourselves unique and exceptional. It would be best to make these improvements in our offerings before the big marketing push as I pointed out in this column about three years ago. 

Recognizing the Need for More Marketing 

One of the first things many small business owners say they need is more marketing or help with marketing. For most, better marketing promises to be the key for more sales, hence better profits and a more successful business. Yet for many businesses, actually whether new and small or older and bigger, more marketing is not really what they need; right now. More marketing bringing in more customers before a business is ready exposes more customers to less than stellar service. 

Have you ever gone to a restaurant’s grand opening only to be greatly disappointed with the overall experience? Many times, a well-meaning manager or owner, of a restaurant or other type of business, will go to great lengths to market a grand opening that corresponds closely to the opening day of the business. The marketing efforts may include press releases, advertising, email blasts by the local Chamber and, of course, a big effort to spread the word on social media. The big event comes, and employees are overwhelmed by the crowds that result from the marketing efforts. The crowd of customers is disappointed as the business fails to meet, let alone exceed their expectations. A great marketing effort at this time, can result in three to five times as many people being disappointed as compared to a “soft” grand opening without all the buzz and fanfare. Future marketing efforts have to be three to five times bigger and more expensive, to attract all those customers disappointed by the initial grand opening effort. 

Create the Positive Customer Experience First 

What the business above needed was not more marketing, but a chance to figure out how to create the positive customer experience; excellence in quality and service. A “soft” opening, maybe inviting a very few friends and family members, would give restaurant owners and staff a chance to work out logistical kinks in service without disappointing a large population of new customers. 

I’m not just picking on restaurants. Many businesses, of all types and sizes, go to great lengths to bring in new customers while they don’t have their processes in place to insure the exceptional customer experience. Larger companies and institutions have marketing and sales departments whose goals are to bring customers in the door, whether or not the production side of the house is ready to serve them. A perfect example is the cellular and communications companies. They are all great at marketing, but many are not so great at delivering the customer promise. 

Same Goes for Fab Lab ICC 

Sometimes people coming to Fab Lab ICC for the first time will say something like “So many people don’t know about this Fab Lab. You need more marketing to get the word out.” I always thank them but then say we are happy with the organic growth in membership resulting by word-of-mouth. We want to work to develop and tweak our processes to improve the member experience before doing more marketing to bring in more members. 

So, most businesses need more marketing at some point, but we all should be working to improve the customer experience so that when our increased marketing efforts bring in new customers, they won’t be disappointed.  

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns and podcast at jimcorrell.com. 

Call Us!
(620) 332-5499

Visit Us!
2564 Brookside Drive | Independence, KS 67301

Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software