There is a reason marketing has its own entire academic category in higher education. It is a complex subject that combines business, psychology, art, statistics, math and storytelling into a discipline that a scarce few people have ever understood well enough to consistently master it.
That said, entrepreneurs and small business owners generally face the same basic set of problems when they are trying to get their product in front of the right customers. Very often, all but one element has been put in place, only to have the single missing piece upend both the product and the business. That can be frustrating, especially for people who should know better. One sometimes begins to wonder if these problems can be solved at all.
Practical Limits
This is the hardest marketing problem to solve because it is usually something that is both impossible to guess and not evident at all by the observable data. A good example is books for middle grade students. Kids prefer paperback books. They don’t like e-books. Unless you’ve been in the publishing business for some time there’s no way to know that, which will likely confuse you if you are trying to sell e-books to middle grade and young adult audiences.
Pricing
All small business people fall into the trap of presuming a low price makes their product more attractive. Very often the opposite is true. Anyone can sell cheap junk. It takes a quality company making a quality product to raise the price to the point where the revenue can support the company and the costs of marketing the product itself.
The alternative is to go further into the red with each sale, and for anyone who lived through the dot com crash, we all know how that worked out.
Too Much Creativity
Marketing isn’t creative. Marketing is determining what people are buying and then copying it. While this might sound a little too cynical for most people’s tastes, the alternative is to fight the market. Ask anyone who tried to short their way through the bull market of the late 1990s or the mid 2010s what happens when you try to fight the market. It’s like trying to fight high tide. Always remember the market can stay irrational a lot longer than you can stay solvent.
Marketing is not creative. It is imitative. You can’t make people want something. You find out what they already want and give them that. Demand always precedes supply.
Failure to Adapt
If something doesn’t sell, far too many small business owners presume it is their fault. It isn’t. If something isn’t selling, it should be abandoned as vigorously as possible and replaced with something that does. It doesn’t pay to get emotionally attached to your products. If you do, you run the risk of riding that failing product right into the ground. Get rid of it and spend your time and energy on something that sells.
Nothing will end your sanity and business faster than hammering away at a failing product.
Freebies
When you price your product at zero, you are sending a message to your potential customers that your product has a value of zero. The very notion that you can build a profitable business with a free product should alert you to the fact something in your world has gone terribly wrong.
Price is directly proportional to value. Your customers will evaluate their purchase in those exact terms. When you raise your prices, a significant proportion of your customers will conclude your product must be good because it is expensive. While that might sound counter-intuitive, it’s often true. Don’t work for free, especially if you’re talented.
Some contend that marketing is more art than science. It is probably closer to luck than art. That said, it is possible to avoid the big mistakes provided you have the experience and the sober ability to make good decisions.
