THE PRIMARY reason for the success or failure of a business is determined by the success or failure of the marketing effort. According to Dun & Bradstreet, 48 percent of all business failures can be attributed to a slowing down or ineffectiveness in the area of marketing and sales. In our dynamic, competitive economy, marketing is the core function of every successful enterprise. No matter what business you are in, you are in the “marketing business.”
In this powerful, practical book on marketing, you will learn or relearn twenty-one key ideas, and many “sub-ideas,” that you can use to improve your strategic marketing results—starting immediately.
Strategic marketing is the art and science of determining what your customers and future customers really want and need—and can use and afford—and then helping them to get it by creating and structuring your products and services in such a way that they satisfy the specific needs of the customers you have identified.
The goal of strategic marketing is to enable you to sell more of your offerings at higher prices over an extended geographical area and achieve market stability, strength, and leadership.
The starting point of successful marketing is for you to remember that customers are always right. They buy for their reasons, not yours. Customers are selfish, demanding, ruthless, disloyal, and fickle. But they are always right, based on their own needs, wants, desires, and ways of thinking. Customers will change suppliers whenever they perceive that they will be better served elsewhere.
Your ability to appeal to their real desires, and to satisfy their wants and needs as they perceive them, will largely determine your success in business.
Marketing is a skill set that can and must be learned by keeping certain ideas and concepts in mind continually, and by asking certain vital questions regularly. If you take the time to think through the answers to the questions in this book, you will sharpen your marketing skills considerably.
The most important part of this book is what you do afterward. It is the specific actions that you take, and how quickly you take those actions, that will determine the entire value of this book for you.
When you read or think of an action you can take to improve your marketing, act on it immediately. Don’t delay. Develop a sense of urgency and a bias for action. These are the essential qualities of all great businesspeople.