Why is marketing important?
Without marketing nobody knows your product exists.
I try not to write in absolutes, but I think this an absolute.
Any time someone finds out about your product or service it’s a result of marketing.
Think about it for a second.
I don’t think it’s possible to come up with an example of selling a product or service without marketing. Advertising, content, word of mouth…it’s all marketing.
Building Marketing Into The Product and Service
The first thing any company can to do improve its marketing is to build marketing right into what you’re actually selling. It’s not easy, but when you figure out a way to do it you can really grow your company.
The classic example is Hotmail.
In the early days of consumer Internet and email Hotmail came along – I think it was part of Microsoft – and got a ton of people to sign up. The way they did it was by putting a little message “Signup for your Hotmail account” in the footer of every email their users would send out.
Nobody at the time knew what was really going on with email so they didn’t delete the message. Every message they sent to friends with other email accounts like those provided by the telephone company or AOL saw it and became curious. They would signup for the free Hotmail account and soon it was one of the biggest email providers.
It’s not so much that way anymore, but the concept was to build the marketing right into the product and get people exposed to the product.
Using Existing Lists
Marketing is all about accessing existing audiences and exposing your brand, product or service to those people. When you’re new you start with nothing. You have to work hard to build your list of people. You have to build your audience.
To do this you have to give people that have an audience something. Sometimes that’s money. Other times you have to give your time in exchange for access to an audience. Other times you can give something like content or free services.
When you’re an established company you already have an audience or a customer list. One of the ways you can grow is to offer a new product or service to your existing list. You can market to them. They already trust your brand. You can send them a message alerting them to the new way you can make their lives better.
Word Of Mouth
When people tell each other about companies and products they’re doing marketing. This is kind of like building marketing into your product. When you do something that is really good people will tell each other about it.
Marketers sometimes go back to the idea of creating loyalty for a brand. It’s not as easy as setting up a loyalty program like Amazon Prime or something like that.
Word of mouth marketing and loyalty are created by the company providing a really great product and experience. You get word of mouth when you do a good job. It’s not really something you can force. You can push your clients along a little by requesting they refer you, but you really aren’t going to push the needle much unless you have a really great product.
Conclusion
The answer to why marketing is important is that without marketing you wouldn’t sell a single product. People would not discover your brand. They would have no idea you exist and without it your business won’t exist.
Now, think of what you’re doing for marketing right now. Maybe your business is all built on referrals and word of mouth. That’s one way to do marketing.
How big could your business be if you found additional ways to sell?