Times are tough and although I hear a lot of business people say they need to do more marketing, often this comes to nothing. But if trade is slow, doing nothing won’t improve it.

Reasons often given for inaction include lack of time or money, but perhaps another reason is that many people don’t know where to start.

This is a shame because there are many useful actions businesses can take that are quick, easy and don’t cost anything.

One way of looking at marketing is as storytelling. People love stories and somewhere in every business there is at least one interesting story to tell.

Stories break the ice when you’re networking, help you build business relationships, enable you to sell your products and services without realising you’re selling and can win you valuable PR coverage. A story can translate into many different formats.

Can anyone tell a story?

Yes. When I am working as a journalist, the part I enjoy most is when someone calls up out of the blue and, sometimes hesitantly, starts telling me a fascinating story about their business, products or services.

I search for stories like this to interest and excite my readers. Often these stories are more interesting than press releases which some PR agencies write at considerable expense to their clients. (There are also very good PR agencies and we like to think we write a mean press release ourselves.)

So as a result of picking up the phone and telling their story that business has obtained valuable newspaper coverage. It can and does work.

How can this help us start marketing?

It’s just one example of what we can achieve when we think about it and take that first step to do something. Yes, pay marketing specialists when you have the budget, but don’t let that stop you before then.

What is important is to start telling our story. If we don’t, no one will hear it.

In these z2ztips I want to share some ordinary observations on marketing that I hope will be useful. If they help just one business, that’ll be reward enough.

Love is in the air.

And all the time I seem to be exhorted to love this and love that. I must love parks or love my heart or cycling or fish or [pluck any word out of the air].

Some people in marketing must have fallen for the love concept big time.

I haven’t.

I like raspberries. I grow raspberries. I like picking and eating plump, juicy raspberries. I like making raspberry jam and raspberry sponges. I don’t love them though.

Nor do I love cars, confectionery, gadgets, television programmes, web sites, power tools or [insert randomly generated name of object].

I love those dear to me: my wife, my family and special people in my life.

This lazy marketing concept debases real love.

Does my wife really want to be placed on the same level as a manufactured dessert or a mass produced garment in a high street store?

Please stop it.

And now I’m going to make sure I don’t say I love this or that so that each time I do use this special word it conveys my full meaning.

. . . bin it.

That’s what I did when I received an unsolicited email. The first part of the subject heading was the price, which was followed by the name of a seminar being promoted.

I deleted it.

Then I retrieved it because I wondered whether the company actually got any response as this approach made no need to persuade me, but rather turned me against the offering straight away. And it’s made me think: I don’t like being sold to like this, but perhaps this company has found it to work.

That’s one of the important things about any form of marketing and sales. We’re not selling to ourselves, but to other people who often have very different tastes and preferences.

I still don’t like this approach and binned the email again.

What do you think?