With less than a week to go until Learning Pool’s annual conference & with no flights leaving Northern Ireland again this morning – oh and with the prospect of launching a new website next week – marketing is something that’s been in my mind – a lot – recently.

For small companies, there’s always a lot of anxiety around spending your limited amounts of cash on marketing.  Everyone knows the old premise that 50% of marketing spend is effective, it’s just a shame that no-one knows which 50%…

At our HQ in Derry, we’re up to our eyes in balloons & conference giveaway bags & party planning so I think it’s wise to take 5 minutes out & reflect on the following excerpt from 37 Signals’ recent book “Rework”:

Marketing is not a department.  Every time you answer the phone, send an email or someone uses your product – that’s marketing.  Every word you write on your website is marketing.  Every error message in your software is marketing.  The checkout counter and every invoice you send is marketing.

Aah – I feel so much better now – it seems those conference giveaway bags aren’t so important after all…