Marketing deserves a high, if not the highest place at our dinner table as entrepreneurs.

By Taurai Shoko

  Business is nothing without a market. A single article will therefore not even begin to scratch the surface of this important tool in our business's survival kit. Put bluntly, a market is the only reason a business exists. We also need to differentiate between marketing and selling. I would say selling is only a tip of the iceberg which is marketing. It is again important to know this difference otherwise in our enterprises we will put the cart before the donkey and reverse ourselves into the business cemetery.

There will always be a need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits them and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a

customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed is to make the product or service available.” (Peter Drucker)

 To briefly explain, I will use an everyday scenario. First, I will hasten to offer my apologies to (us) salespeople. I am only giving an example of the bad apples amongst us. Some customers hate salespeople. And rightly so! All this is caused by these bad apples. What Drucker is saying is, do not go door to door trying to ‘manhandle’ people to buy your vegetables for example. You are probably knocking on the door of a person who has a backyard flourishing with more appetizing vegetables than the shriveled leaves you’re a presenting. Sorry, that hurt. But that is not as painful as seeing our business going bust. Those we owe will call us even in the middle of the night. We even end up telling them we are out of the country – and roaming! And finally the messenger of court comes to attach our assets. All because we did not do due diligence called market research. Market research = know your market. Period.

Some years ago there was an ad I liked on ZTV. A business was trying to sell some beer brand and failing. The entrepreneur ended climbing onto the roof offering ‘free beer and free chicken.’ Really? Business is not a charity organisation. But we can be a benevolent but very sorry & broke company if we do not research well. Secondly, there are no friends in business. Therefore we should not make fish hooks and go knocking on our friends’ doors hoping they buy for a weekend out on Lake Chivero or Mguza dam. Yes, we may love crafting steel with our hands. It may even look first class. But we are not our market! So sentimentality is not going to bring us needed business. Richard Branson advises us to have fun in our businesses. But I am yet to hear him say we should let our emotions prevail over us.

In 2011 and 2012 I made 2 different marketing blunders due to lack of diligent market research. I wanted some contingency reserve in case my core business slackened.  Unfortunately, I only managed to recover a third of the money I had put in. I am sharing with you these failures so that I will always be reminded. That way I will guard against such situations. This dovetails with my first article wherein I mentioned the benefit of having a sounding board. Being a sole business owner has the glamour of being top dog. But you could also be one very unhappy dog when you get stung by failure alone.

I read somewhere where someone was talking about ‘failing all the way to success.’ I call failure the tuition fees of entrepreneurship. So let us learn and move on – but wiser.

I would rather burn off the soles of my shoes going door to door to find out what people want first. Then divide that general population into segments if need be based on the following determinants. Social factors: Age, gender, reference groups, opinion leaders, culture, subculture, family. Individual factors: Perception, motivation, learning ability, values, beliefs & attitudes, personality, self-concept and lifestyle.

If we do our due diligence we will learn early enough why consumers behave the way they do. Knowing them means we understand them. We can then go and make doughnuts instead of fish hooks. We will then balance the relationship among our 4 Ps. (Product, price, promotion and placement/distribution)

I do not think there is any business that can claim that their research found out what each individual customer wants. This is a massive project which sucks in a lot of resources. So choose your representative population well. You may end up preaching to the wrong congregation.

Again if we know their needs well we will know when those needs change, and we change with them or try and educate the customers to like a variant of our product or service. We should always remember we are in business to offer solutions to the market’s problems. We give them a promise (value proposition) that we are going to help them out of their problem/challenge. And their perception should tell them that it is finally done when they start using our product and services. If they do not get this perceived satisfaction they will brand us ‘cheats.’ So we should not go into business for short term gains. But if we want to be there for the long haul, we need to do our footwork before production.

One other issue about marketing is to know who the final decision maker is. That person is our paymaster. We tend to focus on this when we do B2B marketing and tend to overlook it at the B2C and C2C levels. Not good. We will only be able to tailor our marketing communication after knowing who the boss is as it were. A parent may carry the wallet yet their 5 year old kid is the decision maker. Picture the final showdown in a toy shop to understand this vividly.   

We need know our market (research, understand what people want, make it available & advertise/communicate its availability). When the customer decides to come in we should make sure we treat them like our lives depend on it. And they do! Picture the opposite for better comparison.

Let us always remember that the selling transaction at our till is a marketing component. A customer who perceives we are being indifferent may decide to leave at this very late stage. Again when they walk away with goods it is their after-purchase perception that we want to maintain in our favour. Then they will happily become our ambassadors and evangelists. Word of mouth referral is the cheapest form of advertising. People trust their friends who tell them about our goods or services than us trying to flight what I could call an anonymous ad on tv or radio. Why should they trust us when they do not know us? So let us know them first.

Next article will be ‘Know your business so keep on following!

Taurai Shoko is a Property Developer by proffession, he stays in ZIMBABWE, but operates a business in Botswana.

Age: 49

Core management skills are in construction project management. He is about to complete his business management degree, and looks forward to easing into mainstream management. His objective is to deliver better all-round by learning through helping others become better entrepreneurs.  Hence  joining YESZIM as a contributor.