02 Jun Why Marketing Should be the Center of Your Business

When looking at outlines of the interrelationship between various components of an entrepreneurial company’s structure, what is at the center? Manufacturing? Finance? Investor relations? While all are important, I have found that for most growing companies, pretty much everything should flow from a central focus on marketing. Of course marketing is not just sales, since sales is just a component of a sound marketing strategy. Marketing is everything from deciding on your product or service and the mix thereof, making sure you are serving an unmet need in the marketplace, defining your target market, developing a strategy for reaching and educating that market, determining the best distribution strategy, packaging, pricing, advertising, social media and yes, also the direct and online sales effort itself. Here are five sound reasons to keep marketing at the core of your short and long term business strategy:

1. Nothing is possible without marketing. Seems obvious, but if you have the wrong product or service, or sell to the wrong people, or don’t choose the right distribution channel, nothing else matters.

2. The marketing strategy must drive all else. Until you know what you are producing, you can’t decide where or how to produce it. If you are a service business, the type of service you offer and market segments will drive where you locate as well as decisions like what financing you might need to promote and advertise.

3. Marketing creates revenue. All other aspects of business are cost centers. Marketing and sales provide both cost and revenue. So putting marketing at the center creates the greatest opportunity to maximize the top line.

4. Marketing manages cost. If you are contemplating a particular product or service offering, you can do both objective and subjective research and testing before you commit to selling. That up front cost helps manage much bigger costs down the line.

5. Marketing is everything for a service business. Years ago I owned a radio station. We didn’t make a product, just played music and commercials. A purely marketing-driven business, as most service businesses are. No question a manufacturing business has to focus heavily on the production side to get things done. In the service world, it’s all about marketing both before and after a customer comes in the door. So execution is also key to marketing success of course.

My Wharton marketing professors can do a much more sober and informed review of the importance of making marketing a linchpin of your business, but I know they agree!