Marketing as Strategy

In a recent post about Marketing, I wrote:

“It’s my opinion that Marketing is the most important thing a company or an individual needs to do in order to succeed.”

But isn’t planning and working from a strategy important too? Good question.

Strategy

According to businessdictionary.com, strategy is:

1. A method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such as achievement of a goal or solution to a problem.
2. The art and science of planning and marshalling resources for their most efficient and effective use. The term is derived from the Greek word for generalship or leading an army. See also tactics.”

Science of planning? Marshalling resources? A general leading an army? Sounds intimidating.

Which is why you’ve probably never thought about your strategy and therefore will never succeed. It’s also why I suggest you forget the idea of developing a strategy and concentrate fully on marketing instead.

But!

This will only work if you remember marketing is more than a message and focus on the word market.

“In marketing, the term market refers to the group of consumers or organizations that is interested in the product, has the resources to purchase the product, and is permitted by law and other regulations to acquire the product.” – NetMBA.com

Marketing as Strategy

In addition to being far less intimidating than strategic planning, working on marketing has additional specific benefits for musicians and artists:

• Customer Focus – everything in marketing revolves around “the group of consumers or organizations that is interested in the product” as opposed to strategy which can be self-focused.
• Complete Solution – marketing is an end-to-end solution that starts with who is the potential customer, what do they want and where are they, and ends with, is the customer happy?
• Communication – you can’t think about marketing without playing out conversations in your head. This means that everything you’re thinking about and planning for will help you better communicate who you are and what you do.
• Useable – which means all your efforts will give you something immediately and thoroughly useable in your day-to-day career building life.

So yes, I believe Marketing is the most important thing a company or an individual needs to do in order to succeed. The question is: do you?