Advertising saavy businesses spend thousands of dollars every year on their marketing efforts. Many know exactly what and where their investment will bring them in return.
Startups and small businesses view marketing as a matter of survival, not theory: their business will disappear if they don’t invest in it.
Between those two extremes an interesting thing often happens: companies forget and neglect marketing. Often times, once a company makes a few thousands or million dollars in revenue, it’s tempting to let things slide. Some of these companies stop marketing altogether.
Business is booming! We are growing! We are busy… why bother with the expense and hassle?
Oh, let me tell you…
Marketing is like water for the body. You need it. It isn’t like a band aid that you just apply when things are not going well. This is something that you sip, chug, and devour! Marketing is there to support you through ups and downs – to strengthen and maintain your bottom line.
Inexperienced companies regard marketing as medicine to be taken when something is wrong. (“Not enough customers? Take some marketing and call me in the morning.”)
“Peter Drucker, one of the leading experts on management theory, wrote:
Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.
He also wrote:
Marketing is not only much broader than selling; it is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is from the customer’s point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.”
Don’t wait until you are dehydrated to start marketing.