“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.” – Milan Kundera
Misconceptions About Marketing
I used to think that marketing was bad. I used to believe that its goal was to take advantage of unsuspecting individuals. I used to think that marketers studied psychology to convince people to buy the stuff they didn’t need.
Now I don’t. Now, I know that marketing is not supposed to be those things.
Marketing is good.
Marketing is about getting the right things in front of the right people.
An Example…
Hypothetically, a company across the country creates a solution to a problem you’ve been having. Let’s say that you have recently been diagnosed with a chronic illness, and they have recently created a pill that allows users to completely heal from chronic illness. There’s no doubt that you would want this pill. But what if you just didn’t know it existed? What if this company decided that it would not spend money on promotion? What if this company entirely relied on word-of-mouth, an organic form of marketing, to spread the word? This would be worse for you, the potential consumer, than it would be for the company.
Every Product is Useful to Someone
Arguably, there is not a product that is not useful…to some extent. The goal is to match a product’s usefulness with a person that needs it or desires it. That is the power of marketing.
Marketing is how that matching process is both expedited and strengthened.
Two Types of Marketing
There are two types of marketing — inbound and outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is about drawing customers in passively. It’s about optimizing the experience and compelling everything that leads up to the buying and that follows. It has to do with the presentation — copy, the titles, the colors, etc. This is what compels someone to initially click on the product page.
Inbound marketing aims to optimize for piquing a potential customers’ interest, should they come across the product or the content.
Outbound marketing is active marketing. It is what most people think of when they think about marketing. It has to do with ads and promotions and spreading the message by getting the product or company in front of as many eyes as possible.
Marketing and Precision
Marketing gets more precise the more it is done because marketers consistently go through a process of hypothesis — test — analysis — conclusion. They learn new things with each test and attempt to get more precise with the people they are targeting and the methods they use for targeting.
Marketing has become a science, but at its heart, it’s all about matching products or services with the right people.
Good Marketing vs Bad Marketing
Marketing is not bad. Surely, there are people and companies who prefer the volume of sales over the quality of sales, but rarely will that company last. Good companies and good marketers want to target people that actually want and need the product or service being sold because that ends in more purchases and referrals.
Immense responsibility must go into understanding the tools of business. In marketing especially, each marketer must have standards in regards to the products they are willing to promote.