Basics of Marketing for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs

The marketing concept maintains that the starting point for good marketing, whether it be for a service or a product, is to understand the situation from the perspective of the customer. To appreciate the customer’s view of your business and your market offering, you need to appreciate several factors. First, many of your customers or potential customers view anything offered by a business with a good deal of suspicion. They have been bombarded for years with advertising and other promotions offering deals that are “too good to be true” and they have often been dissatisfied with products or services they purchased. They have a healthy Marketing is the process by which a product or service is conveyed from the producer to the customer. For your business to be profitable—indeed, in order to have any money at all coming in—someone must buy your output. The issues discussed here apply to all types of marketing situations, from those of the product manufacturer who is selling to wholesalers to those who are selling a service. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to the specific thing offered for sale, be it a product or service, wholesale or retail, as the market offering. While there are, of course, differences facing any particular business in a specific situation, the following general principles are applicable across situations. A complete discussion of the complexities and issues surrounding marketing is beyond the scope of this publication, but the interested reader could consult the additional reading sources listed as references. Rather than consider specific types of marketing activities that may be appropriate to a given situation (promotional campaigns, market research, pricing decisions), my purpose here is to explain some of the key issues that confront anyone who wants to market a product or service. Basics of Marketing for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs