Why every business need marketing

Why every business need marketing

For the majority of business owners, it comes as no surprise that the success of a company is highly dependent on being able to sell the product or service. In fact, sales are the lifeline of a thriving business.

In the same vein, it’s common knowledge that in order to sell, the product or service has to be marketed effectively. Without marketing, a company is going to grow stagnant and die. You need those leads in the sales pipeline.

With these two principles being accepted as necessary steps to keep a business thriving, one critical error is that often, business owners believe that when starting a company, they need to jump right in and throw all of their efforts into marketing, right? Not so fast. There is another important step to focus on before they any marketing plan is launched.

It is a crucial point, and neglecting this means a business is throwing money away by having marketing campaigns that are either not effective as they should be or not successful at all.

That point is public relations.

Let’s first get our terms straight.

A sale is the exchange of funds with a service or product. That’s easy.

Marketing is defined differently in different dictionaries, but the concept is the same – putting your service or product in front of qualified clients (or customers/ patients, etc.) so that you can sell to them.

Again, some may argue this definition is not complete and will talk about “the 4 P’s” (Product, Price, Place, and Promotional Strategy), but we are talking about the same thing.

“Public Relations” is creating a positive opinion or perception about you from the public as a whole or your target market. It is not about convincing someone to buy something.

As a rule of thumb, I like to say that selling is talking about the product or yourself, while marketing is talking about the clients and their problems (that are solved by your product or service), and PR is others talking about how good or nice you are, so that people think highly of you.

Positioning can be viewed as a form of public relations aimed to have your brand occupy a distinct position, relative to competing brands, in the mind of the consumers. In particular, authority positioning (expert positioning) establishes the business or person as being at the top of the industry (in terms of quality, prestige, knowledge, etc.).

As an example, when a dentist is talking with the patient about doing a crown for $1000, it is selling. When he promotes the business on the search engines, builds a website or sends postcards saying there is a discount for new patients, it is marketing. The message could have been “all new patients get a free exam and teeth whitening kit” or as plain as “we are accepting new patients; call now.”

Public relations could be a news story about a community service the doctor did to help a local school. Authority positioning could be promoting an interview with the dentist on a local radio station, promoting a new book about dentistry or announcing the doctor was chosen as the top dentist in their city.

Marketing or selling without positioning can work to some degree but is it not as effective and, in some cases, can recoil on the business. Without positioning, you are just another business marketing to them.

Consumers are very cautious when they sense someone marketing to them (or selling something to them) and it is as if they put on a bulletproof vest as soon as they get a hint that this is going on.

That is the reason people are throwing away “junk mail” without reading it or even saying “no” when asked if they need help at the clothes store. When you start marketing without positioning first, you are falling into this trap.

For that reason, some of the marketing money you spend is wasted because it turns consumers off. Sometimes, you can even alienate several people and thus can be harmful to your brand.

On the other hand, if you have a positioning as the go-to provider in your field or city, then when you start marketing, people are receptive to that. In fact, when people are receiving marketing messages from you, they open them, consume them and act upon them.

When consumers consider getting a service from someone with authority positioning, they are prepared to pay even more than what the competitors charge because they assume the quality is higher. If that person or business is charging about the same, then people feel it is a real bargain.