Article Marketing and Beyond

Marketing – What exactly is it? Is it sales? Or merely a fancy academic term for promotion? For all of the hype around marketing, there isn’t a clear definition as to what it truly stands for – an encapsulation of all the things done to get customers to learn, understand, and want your product/service.

With the massive amount of products our consumerist society churns out every year, it’s more important now than ever to truly educate yourself on the basics of marketing. This holds true regardless if you’re an ambitious small business owner or just a typical consumer. Understanding the foundation of successful marketing will allow you to cut through hype when selecting products/services to purchase, and if you’re on the other side of the fence, help you sell yourself and your business products without being labeled the dreaded “s” word – sleazy.

You can have the best product in the world, but if you don’t know how to market it, it may as well not exist.

Billion dollar companies aren’t built overnight, but you can bet your last dollar that every last one of them has a powerful, industry-leading marketing machine. Some of the greatest inventions of our time weren’t discovered until a successful marketer understood how to package it and sell it to the public. An innovative product or service is only half the battle – the real challenge often lies in the system in place to market or sell the product.

The prime example of this are franchises, and specifically, McDonalds. If you spent months perfecting a secret recipe for a delicious hamburger, it would most likely taste better than anything on the McDonald’s menu. The next question you should ask yourself is – “How am I going to sell it to the masses”?

If you don’t have a proven system for marketing your product to consumers, guess what you’ve got? Not much more than adoring compliments from your family and friends (which is pleasant, but not exactly the windfall of cash you expected).