What exactly is marketing and why it is vital to the entrepreneur? Marketing is everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of customers.
It is also an opportunity for people with entrepreneurial skill, insight and highest awareness on how to effectively reach potential customers, successfully promote their products and make it most appealing to a greater number of consumers.
It includes such diverse disciplines like sales, public relations, pricing, packaging and distribution. If business is all about people, money and the art of persuading, then marketing is all about finding the right people to persuade.
The most brilliant marketing strategy will not help earn a profit or achieve a dream if it is not built around potential clients. A strategy that is not based on customers is like a man who knows a thousand ways to court a woman but does not know any woman.
People have their own unique perceptions of the world based on their belief system. The most innovative ideas, the greatest products or a superior services succeed only when they are marketed in the context of people’s perceptions.
For instance, the domestic marketing industry was the first in the world to sell products in sachets to cater to the needs of the low and middle class income clients, specifically the daily wage earners who buy anything from sugar to cooking oil in small amounts, that small variety store owners repack in small plastic bags.
The idea of selling products in sachet packs caught the attention of the world marketing industry which today sells many products in small and convenient sizes, enough for one time use.
The idea of selling products in sachet form is proof that people do not just buy a product. They buy the concept of what that product will do for them or help them do for themselves. In the case of sachet, it is enough to match their daily budget.
In general, marketing is identifying the particular wants and needs of customers, and then going about satisfying those clients better than the competitors.
Entrepreneurs are passionate about their ideas, products and service, and innocently assume that other people feel the same. However, it does not work that way.
Marketing does not begin with a great idea or a unique product. It begins with customers who want and need a particular product and will actually patronize it.
