Marketing: Expense or Investment?

August 30th, 2007 | 01:23 pm

As my friend and a coach to the mortgage industry, Mike Midget, recently expressed in complimenting me about this, “You put more content in your newsmagazine month after month than newsletters I pays hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a year for. I can"t believe you guys just give it away every month.” Thanks for the kind words, Mike . . . but Believe It. We have a surge of dealflow every time our newsmagazine hits mailboxes . . . as we should. It more than pays for itself… and therein lies the important business lesson: do you view your marketing as merely an expense or as an investment? Do you know your return on investment (ROI) or are you just doing what everyone else in your industry does because “that"s what we"ve always done.” That"s what I call “The Industry Incest Trap,” but so many companies fall into it like lemmings tumbling over a cliff into the sea. How will you EVER get noticed by your target market if you just do the minimal that everyone else in your industry does?!? If you do NOTHING to stand apart from the pack???

At MCC, we also believe by providing great content in our website, blog, and newsmagazine, it furthers the differentiation between us and our nearest competitors. And as Mike and you surely know by now, we are unapologetically Pro-Small Business and Pro-Entrepreneur here. That"s our target audience . . . and we are ALSO one of them, unlike most of our competitors. You can rest assured, NO OTHER commercial lender puts out a publication quite like ours.