Business, Marketing, Sales, Small business

Why Marketing Is Important For Any Business

marketing-conceptsIt's been almost a year since I started an online business and so far I've learned a lot about businesses in general, one of the things that really has served me is learning that business is simply the process of exchanging money for something, this process, which is called "a sale", is in fact the core's core of any big, medium, or small company. This is the simplest way to understand business and keeping it simple is a key factor in order to be successful, this way you can focus on what really matters and leave aside what doesn't help the business growth, and if you want to know more about how to identify and use what really matters for any business, online or offline, keep reading since I will be discussing this in deep detail here.

One of the biggest problems to any business is that the people who manage them have not identified the parts that truly compound the business. Let me tell you right now that a business is compounded only for those parts which make or help to make sales, anything else could be a nice to have or a waste of time, energy, resources and money. The problem with this is that some business owners are so busy with many things that they allow themselves to be dragged by the rhythm of any situation, thus they start doing something in the morning and twenty minutes later they are doing something completely different from what they were supposed to do; this is an issue because it means lack of purpose. The solution to this is to establish a purpose, but what the purpose should be? Keep reading.

On the other hand there are people who are aware of this and they pay attention to those parts that are important for the business, but the problem is that a large portion of these guys distribute the amounts of time, energy, resources and money in ways that are not helpful for the business' sake, thus even when they work a lot they seem to have only small wins or very distant ones. This of course is not the most convenient way of doing things and even when this could be a little easier to fix, the change will require as well a different strategy and with that a potential learning curve.

What parts are the ones that really matter to any business at all?

Any successful business has only three parts; if your business has more than three parts you are over-complicating things, on the other hand if the business has less than three parts something critical is missing.

  1. Marketing/Sales: This is the part from where the money comes. Marketing and sales refers to the process of letting people know what you do and why they should get it from you versus someone else. If you have been paying attention you'll know that this is the biggest and most important part to any business because no business can survive without positive cash flow.
  2. Production/Product: The product is what you sell, this element is very important as well and it is critical that your product is excellent. A good enough product is nice to have but the people will go with that merchant who offers the best deal, and trust me, if your product is a junky-cheap product you'll make a few sales and after that people will become aware of it and they'll go with the competition. This is the second most important part of any business.
  3. Operations: All the other aspects helping the business to function properly such as the computers, furniture, employees, software, interior or web design, meetings, finance department, and any other aspect that holds the whole process together goes here. This is the third most important part to any business and yet this is where most businesses dedicate their attention.

These are the only parts that actually make or help to make sales to any business, anything else is not considered as a critical factor for the business' sake; it does not mean that you can't pay attention to other things but these should never be obstacles for you to focus on what really matters.

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There are some business owners who know this and yet are not successful because they focus all of their time, energy, resources and money as follows:

  • Operations: 60%
  • Production/Product: 25%
  • Marketing/Sales: 15%

Now you know why they are broke. If no marketing and sales are being made the business will consume the personal money of the owner, this will soon end with everything that feeds the business and it will have to be closed.

How to make sure that the business will be successful

If you want to ensure having a successful business some changes must take place, these are super easy to implement and the more you do this the better you'll become and the faster results will show up. Here they are:

  1. Marketing/Sales: This activity must be done continuously until you reach a certain audience level, after that your job in this matter will be market to them or marketing any new product that you release. Recognizing that this is the most important part of the business you will dedicate 80% of your attention to it.
  2. Production/Product: Realize that the product is designed once, after that, mass production will take care of it and you'll never have to touch it again, unless you want to redesign it. This part of the business will take only 15% of all your attention.
  3. Operations: Organize the rubber band that holds the whole process together and touch it no more, make sure it is stable and updated as required. This will take only 5% of your whole attention.

This as you can see requires a completely different strategy but paraphrasing the saying: If you keep doing what you are doing you'll keep getting what you're getting". Five years from now you won't regret this; hopefully the results will show up a lot sooner than this, but it will mostly depend on your ability to switch the strategy as well as mastering it.

To your success!

This article was written by Jose Lozano, a successful online entrepreneur and publisher, last year he started an online business dedicated to share his passion for RC aviation toys with others, and after struggling a little he understood where the issue was. Jose now enjoys writing about the best remote control helicopter for beginners as well as helping people with useful tips to buy an AR Drone from Parrot.

If you have any questions, please ask below!