| 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. 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 sell gorilla food, but doesn't know anyone who owns a gorilla. Great in theory but unrewarding in practice. 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, products, or services and 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. Context can be many things, singly or simultaneously. To name a few, you may market to your customers within the context of their wants, needs, problems solved, situation improved or many other contexts, such as social and economic trends, governmental regulations, etc. People don't just "buy" a product. They "buy" the concept of what that product will do for them, or help them do for themselves. People who are overweight don't join a diet center to eat pre-packaged micro-meals. They "buy" the concept of a new, thin, happy and successful self. A good marketing plan can help you focus your energy and resources. But a plan based solely on your perceptions, does not advance the agenda. Consult a smart marketer, market research, however simple or sophisticated, is important. Take time at the beginning to discover who your potential customers are, and how to effectively reach them. Just keep in mind that research attempts to predict the future by studying the past. It reveals what people have done, and extrapolates what people might do -- not what people will do. Planning is imperative, research is important, but there's no substitute for entrepreneurial insight. As Mark Twain wrote, "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus". |