Marketing… Science or Art?

Entrepreneurs to CEOs to designers, we all succeed at the mercy of the market.

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We have to bring people what they want, even before they know it.

We’re not the customers. It’s not about what we want to do or make.

We’re humble servants to what people want and getting it wrong will be obvious, fast.

Phil Knight of Nike fame learned that lesson, so we don’t have to: if you only focus on technical excellence, you’ll only ever be a niche name.

Nike went from meteoric growth to 6 months of plummeting sales and near-insolvency.

What could tumble a powerhouse like Nike? Thinking they know better than the market.

Being a technical specialist with no marketing concern is fine if your niche is running shoes during the hottest running craze of all time.

If you’re doing anything else, at any other time, it could be a billion-dollar blunder.

It might be life or death for your business.

Marketing-oriented isn’t a dirty term.

Your marketing is built around giving customers what they want.

You need to start with that, not with the super-impressive prototype that experts in the field are going to lose their minds over.

Building a great product matters to you and to me and to the customer.

But building a product or service they want is why businesses exist.

Start with the people, the desire, and the market.

Build excellence in the spaces of their unfulfilled desire and you’ll be THE company.

Then you can come back and tell me how good your product/service is!

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Until next time.

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— Saf

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