What is Marketing?
What exactly is marketing and why is it important to you as an entrepreneur? Simply stated,
marketing is everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential
customers.
It includes diverse disciplines like sales, public relations, pricing, packaging, and
distribution. In order to distinguish marketing from other related professional services, S.H.
Simmons, author and humorist, relates this anecdote.
"If a young man tells his date she's intelligent, looks lovely, and is a great
conversationalist, he's saying the right things to the right person and that's marketing. If the
young man tells his date how handsome, smart and successful he is — that's advertising. If
someone else tells the young woman how handsome, smart and successful her date is —
that's public relations."
You might think of marketing this way. If business is all about people and money and the art
of persuading one to part from the other, then marketing is all about finding the right people
to persuade.
Marketing is your strategy for allocating resources (time and money) in order to achieve your
objectives (a fair profit for supplying a good product or service).
Yet the most brilliant strategy won't help you earn a profit or achieve your wildest dreams if
it isn't built around your potential customers. A strategy that isn't based on customers is
rather like a man who knows a thousand ways to make love to a woman, but doesn't know
any women. Great in theory but unrewarding in practice.
If you fit the classic definition of an entrepreneur (someone with a great idea who's under-
capitalized), you may think marketing is something you do later — after the product is
developed, manufactured, or ready to sell.
Though it may feel counter-intuitive, marketing doesn't begin with a great idea or a unique
product. It begins with customers — those people who want or need your product and will
actually buy it.
Entrepreneurs are in love with their ideas, and they should be. After all, why would anyone
commit their energy, life savings, and no small part of their sanity to anything less than a
consuming passion. Because entrepreneurs are passionate about their idea, product, or
service, they innocently assume other people will feel the same. Here's the bad news — it
just doesn't work that way!
People have their own unique perceptions of the world based on their belief system. The
most innovative ideas, the greatest products, or a superior service succeed only when you
market within the context of people's perceptions.
