The Do's And Do Not's Of Marketing

By Maryl Joop


Marketing is a key ingredient for the success of any startup business or organization. Marketing is likewise the lifeblood for a business that wishes to see growth, or, for that matter, longevity and sustained success.

But as all business people know, the intricacies of business are far more elaborate and difficult to perform than simply sell, expand and make money. No, unfortunately there are other actions that a company must make in order to see the growth and success they desire.

There are several ways to go about building an industrial marketing strategy that will work to promote the products or services of a business, but the following few tips on how to appropriately build a marketing strategy should be helpful for those startup companies that have little to no knowledge of how to develop and implement a marketing campaign.

But far too often, this key component of marketing is seen more as the little brother or helpful aid to the larger picture of sales. And in all honesty that may be the extent of marketing-a way to drive sales.

First, a startup business should understand exactly what a marketing strategy is and how to use it. A proper marketing strategy for a business should first describe the business, explain the purpose of the products or service of the business, compile a target market profile of potential customers, identify the marketing tactic or technique that will be used to hit that target market, and have a system of accountability and measurement so that the company can determine the success of the marketing strategy.

One of the first do's in marketing is to do one's homework on the market for a product or service as a whole. A company will want to make sure that the target market for their proposed product or service is large enough to support the financial investment of production and marketing. In addition, vary rarely do companies comes up with a product or service that is so undoubtedly unique from another's ideas that it can be marketed as a separate service or product. Thus, research into what other companies are doing within that target market will have to be performed.

However, even with the negative stigma of expenditure of funds attached to it, marketing and marketing campaigns can hold within them the secret to success for many businesses that use them correctly. But how can a business use a marketing campaign correctly?

A company should have a well-defined plan for their marketing campaign with a simple pitch that can deliver on any promises or specified features of the service or product. Not having these things is a huge marketing do not.

While performing their marketing research, a startup company will want to ask questions such as who is the target market, how big is that market, and what avenues could be pursued to expand the target market in the future?

While planning for expansion in the future is important, it should here be noted that one of the biggest mistakes startups make while building their marketing strategy is expanding their scope to too large of a market that ends up drowning them rather than including and building them.




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