With the recently constrained worldwide economies and businesses taking a knock, particularly small businesses, I could not help but think and come to a conclusion that - no matter how good one's product or service is; ultimately, their marketing is what matters, the determining factor between keeping the doors opened or not.
We have seen businesses that have been successfully clocking in profits purely based on these three primary factors:
1.Customer loyalty
2.Brand awareness
3.Brand credibility
Sometimes, when customers keep coming in and the sales targets are reached, entrepreneurs tend to get complacent. Adding with the mentality of continuously cutting costs to increase revenues; entrepreneurs tend to take the route of cutting the marketing budget as one of their means of cutting costs.
With the three factors mentioned above, they would likely still clock the same number of sales sometimes with no marketing budget at all - which forms the complacency. Unfortunately, that era has literally come to an end.
This year has made consumers to be more critical than ever before. Moreover, there are more options than ever before. Leaving no survival room for the complacent.
Businesses with good products aren't necessarily reaping the same fruits like they used to before; reaping rewards without even having a strategic marketing plan in place and a budget backing it up.
Most entrepreneurs are now spending more time in developing strong and strategic marketing plans than obsessing over creating the perfect product.
If the product is good it is good. If one had customers lining up at their store before, it means there is a market for the product. When all of a sudden there's a huge decline in customers and sales, while other entrepreneurs in the same type of business are thriving; marketing is one area to thoroughly look at - plus innovation.
Marketing is the heart and soul of every business, and that has never been truer as it is at this current environment. One's marketing and sales strategy has become paramount to one's USP such as having a "quality" product or service.
It is still important; however, you might have competitors with lesser quality products but still dominate the market purely because of their marketing strategies and your lack thereof.
To make things more difficult, especially for big businesses, the benefits of having the direct to consumer access that has come with the internet has drastically changed the landscape as we all might know. Small and medium businesses are "taking up space", as Mrs Universe would put it. The taking up of these spaces is fundamentally founded in their marketing strategies.
The market is never wrong, the time to blame the market and the environment for your product's failures has come to an end. Market and Innovate.
As an entrepreneur, if there is no market for your product, you wouldn't be doing that business in the first place (well, unless of course you're a chance taker and no market research was done prior).
For the fact that you might be in a specific business, it means there is a market for that particular product or service you sell, and the main factor that will distinguish your businesses' success or lack thereof, lies in your marketing - the engine.
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