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Do-It-Yourself Marketing Tips from Inc. Magazine

How smart companies are selling more and spending less

We've long been impressed by how innovative start-ups are when it comes to marketing their products and services. Forced by lack of resources to be creative, they come up with great ways to get around the usual channels of distribution, the traditional advertising media, and the expensive outside agencies. We've noticed lately that they aren't alone. We've talked to dozens of companies recently, some old, some new, some with revenues of less than a million, some with revenues in the tens of millions.

They all have one thing in common: they're doing more of their marketing in-house and they're liking it better.

Control:

In this chaotic economy, managers want as much control as possible over all phases of their operations, to keep their businesses on track. Flexibility: As competition keeps apace, chief executives have to be able to move quickly and aggressively, and they have a much better chance at that when the work is done inside their companies.

Clutter:

To get a product or service noticed these days, a company has to be innovative to get through the clutter of advertisements and direct mail. Quality: To a person, those we talked with thought the quality of work done in-house was far superior to that farmed out. The common refrain ran, "No one knows our company like we do." Savings: For the most part, managers reported significant cost savings by doing all or part of their own marketing. In-House

Creative:

Across the country, company owners are finding not only that it's less expensive to do their own advertising and promotions, but it's also much more effective. John Hewitt has been in the tax-service business for 22 years. His company, Jackson Hewitt, is based in Virginia Beach, Va. It operates in 27 states and the District of Columbia, and is expected to do $28 million in sales this year. Hewitt figures he knows his business as well as anybody this side of H&R Block and Uncle Sam. That's why he decided in 1989 to fire the company's ad agency (its second) and bring the work in-house.

Technological advances:

especially desktop publishing -- have allowed even the smallest companies to bring design and typesetting in-house. That's a particular boon for catalog companies, which now can make last-minute changes that would take days on the outside. It gives companies both control and flexibility. "When you're dependent on harvests," says president Shepherd Ogden of The Cook's Garden, in Londonderry, Vt., "it's nice to be able to make quick switches." Ogden and his wife, Ellen, run a mail-order seed and gardening-supply business, which started with a garden stand in the early 1980s and went full-time, with a homegrown catalog, in 1988.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing:

If credibility in the marketplace is one of a company's primary concerns, then advertising in and of itself -- even in-house advertising -- may not be the answer. You may need to enlist the support or endorsement of enthusiastic but independent users in order to persuade prospective customers to try your product or service.

Event Marketing:

Event marketing has been going on as long as Betty Crocker has been sponsoring bake-offs. A now time-honored institution among consumer giants, event marketing has emerged as one of the fastest-growing arenas in marketing. But billion-dollar benefactors are not the only ones playing the field these days. Among the North American companies that will spend $3 billion sponsoring events this year, some of the savviest are small, niche companies that manage to turn their products into public spectacles and, as a result, transform their marketing into news events.

Alternative Distribution Channels:

Going to trade shows and using independent reps are standard methods of expanding distribution with little capital. Still, innovating in distribution is a time-honored way for entrepreneurs to make their mark. From Federal Express to Wal-Mart to Dell Computer, plenty of companies have gotten their start with a founder who had an idea for a better way to deliver goods or services to the consumer. But it's not always by choice that entrepreneurs go outside traditional distribution channels.

Marketing Is Eternal:

Despite the enthusiasm and success of these company owners, they would be the first to admit that there are drawbacks to do-it-yourself marketing. One of the main problems is the amount of time it takes.

Reported and written by Susan Greco, Nancy Lyons, Robert A. Mamis, Martha E. Mangelsdorf, Anne Murphy, and Edward O. Welles.