Why it is important to be prepared BEFORE you start marketing

Marketing is a tough, complicated job, with rich rewards for those who stick to their task. Marketing is the process of getting something prepared for the market, and then selling it in the market. That is marketing, simply defined. But if we pare it down like that it might lead to a more fruitful discussion. We've broken it up into two parts, (1) preparing something for the market, and (2) selling it to the market. Today let's focus on (1) preparing something for the market. Why is it important to be prepared BEFORE you start marketing? Well, perhaps that isn't the way to frame it, see. Marketing is a whole process; what comes BEFORE, marketing-wise, is as important as what comes AFTER. So let's consider a few things about this BEFORE process, the preparatory part of marketing.

1. How would a person go about preparing something for the market? How would a businessperson, a marketing team, a company go about such a task? What are some things they might consider?

2. Let's create a little company right now in order to simplify things, as we did above, and get really specific. Let's say we're two people, Jack and Jill, and we're artists, sort of, that is, we create posters and mugs and things with pictures of adorable animals on them. And we know how popular such kitsch is and we want to sell it on the Internet. Believe it or not, we're now ready to start marketing-we're ready to start the preparatory phase of marketing, the BEFORE part of marketing.

3. The title of this small essay is "Why is it important to be prepared BEFORE you start marketing," implying, of course, that if you start advertising a product without proper preparations, disasters can occur. What kind of disasters? Back to Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill have already done some of the BEFORE business-they've set up a website, come up with a company name, and created some of their posters and mugs and T-shirts. This is all a part of the process of marketing. But Jack and Jill don't go far enough. They got their website going, yes; they used important Internet techniques in order to get said website highly listed on major search engines; and, because of having taken these marketing steps, the orders are rolling in. And I mean rolling in-hundreds of orders, everybody wants Jack and Jill's unique take on how adorable animals can be when dressed as famous characters such as Odysseus and Agamemnon from Homer.

4. You've probably already seen their mistake-how can Jack and Jill possibly fill all those orders? Even if they had somebody on hand to fill and send them, where would they get all that product? They make it themselves, remember-and even kitsch takes time to make.

5. Jack and Jill have launched their ship with plenty of fanfare, and it was a pretty ship, and very popular, in fact so many people got onboard that it immediately sank. In the business world, this sort of "mistake"-preparing for everything but success-is actually quite common. Obviously, not all these companies "fail" to the same degree Jack and Jill did, but they still suffered needless anxiety and hassle because of lack of foresight in the BEFORE part of the marketing phase. And that's why it's important to be prepared BEFORE you start marketing, or BEFORE you start the advertising part of marketing.

6. Let's go back to our early, simplistic definition of marketing-preparing something for the market, then selling it there. If you keep this definition in mind, basic as it is, you will rarely go wrong. Always keep in mind that the BEFORE part of marketing is every bit as important as the AFTER. Preparing the stuff, whatever it is, for the marketplace, is the only way you'll have a chance of selling it.