Marketing

There are always enough people ready and anxious to buy, provided you sell what they want at the right price. Of course what people want changes according to time and place.

Sage software founder Mr. Goldman attached enormous importance to marketing in its true form, rather than, as it is often misunderstood to be – a fancy name for sales and advertising. He would define it as identifying your customers, assessing their need for a product or service and delivering it to them in a timely, cost-effective and profitable manner.

Status

Far more than whether people like a product or service, they buy it because it is a status symbol. A product is made a status symbol because:
▪ it is expensive and other people know it is expensive.
▪ other high status people own one, so it is part of that person’s status that the buyer wishes to acquire.

People often not admit this and just say buy because they like the product or service, this is often a lie because they do not want to admit this.

Social Groups

Also a particular group of people may own such a car and so other people buy it as their way of joining that group. For example a particular car may be seen right for rock stars, criminals, architects and so on. Each type of person buys the car they think gains them entrance to that group, they have seen other people of that type and group owns that product or service.

So the purchase of a product or service is a social issue. It is for joining a certain group and gaining status in society.

Talents

An entrepreneur should run a business, where they themselves have talent and understanding of that business. For example there is no point in them running a technology, or fashion business, if they have no understanding, talent and interest in those things.

Everybody has a talent for something.

Delighting customers

Businesses with delighted customers grow remarkably quickly. This is because word-of-mouth from customers who are super happy from your service is huge and they really engage with the product or service.

Also staff get turned on by how delighted the customers are and it becomes part of the business’s culture to do it more.

Personal touches such as handwritten letters, personal conversations and meetings, low prices and many other things above and beyond what the customer will normally get from other places, will delight them.

Quality drives value, which creates profit margins

People will buy something because it gives them value, they are getting the most from what they spend.

So need to make sure there is quality in the product for what the customers pay. If the market segment is for cheapest price, then needs to be good quality for that low price.

So products are made from good materials, work well, with the best service for that price etc.

Once people get great value for what they spend, they will come back in future and that is where the profits are.

Also value means people will pay for it, more people will buy it, they may also pay more for it and that is where the profits margins are.

Getting demand for your product

‘Get loads of demand for your products, by making really good products. All the successful founders are a little too obsessed with making the product good. As they are fanatics, they do things customers do not even know about.

The people in the company need to care too much and then get details amazingly right. Then when a customer looks at the details it is amazing. Also the customers do not get problems which they will also then talk about to others.

They are fanatics about the product.’

a summary of stuff said by Paul Graham.

Entertaining and fun

Some products do not make it because they are boring and some products succeed because they are exciting and fun.

Even a really fun product like a music player, could be boring if it does not have great art, design, marketing, advertising, songs, decor, glamour, etc. as part of its marketing.

People will walk past the vegetable aisle in the supermarket as they see them as boring and go to the sweets, Coca Cola etc.

Most people have boring and dull lives and want to be entertained.

Why people can fail at marketing

An entrepreneur looks are what makes money.

They are not interested for their own sakes what it is, what it looks like, if it is beautiful, fun and so on.

An entrepreneur can quite happily change to doing something else, such as an entirely different business if that will make more money.

They are interested in if they will make money doing it. Their interest is in making money.

What to provide

The entrepreneur must look at what the customer wants, look at that in great detail.

Then as a second stage look at this apply to see if it can be done profitably. For example, customers may want steel, but if there are loads of companies out there supplying it, more than there is a demand for, it may not be profitable.

What stops company providing what customer wants

When an entrepreneur looks at the following first, they will not win, because they will not build what the customer wants.

1, what they themselves would like to and would enjoy building

2, how they would like to work and operate, because it is best for themselves

3, how they believe the world should work and what customers should be doing, even if customers do not want to do that.

These things do matter, or the entrepreneur will not be happy doing the job, but first the entrepreneur has to first win by giving the customers what they want. Otherwise the entrepreneur’s company will not exist because a rival company will do what customer’s want and the 3 things above will not happen at all.

When the entrepreneur looks are what they themselves would enjoy making and would like to make, it must not be something that they are completely bored by and have no interest in, or they will not be motivated what able to do it. However in the main they just make what makes money, then separately from the business in their own time, they make what they would enjoy to make.

If they start merging what makes money and what they would like to make into one product or service, these compromises mean it is neither a business that makes money and also ultimately not what they want to make. So the businessman must focus on making money, so that in their spare time they can make what they want to make and have their hobbies.

Pride of authorship which is a cause of this can creep in, in ways the entrepreneur may not see. If the entrepreneur is the person that created the logo for the branding and they want to have that because it is what they made. They are not impartial as they are proud of what they made. However as a business person have to do what makes money regardless if you made it.

People also treating a business like it is their baby causes similar problems. As they do what they can to look after the baby, which may not be providing the customer and aligning the business with what the customer wants.

So the businessman focuses on what makes money, not ostentation, showing off, getting credit for their work, showing off, etc.

You are selling solutions

When when people are looking for a product, they are are looking for the one that will solve their problem and they are most convinced it will do so.

Often a firm is selling different solutions that contains the same content and work in the same way. However customers are looking at the solution and what it will do for them.

I was working with a relatively large cleaning chemicals manufacturer that sells on their website everything from stone cleaner, general-purpose cleaner, car cleaner, and so on.

It’s all the same product in the bottle.

However, users want to have a product just for their precise situation. When they come to the site directly, they want to find and get the product, which is the exact type of cleaning they want.

They tried telling people it’s all the same products, and it did not work, that route would have let to them losing clients to rivals and going bankrupt.

Cleaning products have acid, alkaline, and non-ionic surfactants which reduce surface tension to break things like oil down. That’s it. They are all the same.

Cleaning materials can also have limescale removing component, aggravating bits in like Cif has, banking soda and disinfectant, also colors and fragrances to help sell them. However, that does not take away from the central concept.

People want what is specific to them, which is what niches and carving up sectors of a market is all about. They go to the answer that most exactly matches their situation and problem without having to extract a concept from one albeit very similar situation which also applies to theirs, as they will choose elsewhere for that which has already done this for them.

Which is why medicines with the same ingredients are often sold in different boxes, one box for each problem a customer may have.

People are buying solutions, whether it’s in the form of information, tools, services, products and so on.

A kitchen cleaning product is saying it is the solution for cleaning kitchens, not a list of its ingredients.

People will sell books on how to stop smoking, or how to lose weight.

A saying is ‘sell a good night’s sleep, not the mattress’

Steve Jobs says that Nike does not say about how good their trainers are in their ads, they honor great athletics and athletes.

You are selling people hopes and dreams

Whatever type of business or industry you are in, you are in the business of selling people hopes and dreams. That is how you sell and market products, it’s about the emotion.

Of all the things that happen in business and marketing, that’s the bit you can control.