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Five years ago, I was doing a Masters in Digital Marketing from a reputed and might I add, very costly, university. About a third into the course, I was getting bored with the fluff and random information being thrown at me by the highly qualified faculty.

Having a background in training and organization development, I couldn’t help but notice that the course had not defined marketing. Without having a clearly defined, actionable definition of a subject, one can not become an expert in it. As the great Greek Philosopher Socrates once said, “The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.”

So one day, after class, I texted my big-wig professor who was clad with all sorts of marketing certifications and endorsements.

I said, “What is the definition of Marketing?” He said, “It’s to make something famous.”

I retorted, “ But, I thought that was PR. “What is the difference between marketing and PR?”

He said, “Good question. You’ll get your answer at the end of the course.”

So to my dismay, I stuck around three quarters of the course, waiting for him to define and differentiate marketing and PR. In vain.

So I took it upon myself to search out a workable, simple, and effective definition that would embrace the entirety of marketing which would then help me actually put all the pieces together and get effective results in this field. I searched and all I found was hyperbole and complexities. Jargon-laden definitions invented by economists or professors who had never run a marketing campaign.

So I searched more. I read over 200 books on the subject dating all the way back to the 1800s. And I finally got it.

Firstly, most people equate marketing with branding or advertising. That is a misconception. Marketing is a broad field that embraces several other subjects within it. These subjects are Branding, Packaging, Pricing, Public Relations, Press, Advertising, Promotion and Sales. But just because you are doing one of them, doesn’t mean you’re marketing.

Here’s the simplest, most jargon-free definition of marketing you’re ever likely to come across found in the book 1 Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib:

“If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Showground Saturday,” that’s advertising.

If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion.

If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the local newspaper writes a story about it, that’s publicity.

And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations.

If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and, ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales.

And if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing.”

Yup, it’s as simple as that – marketing is the strategy you use to get your target audiences to know you, like you and trust you enough to become a customer and exchange value.

More specifically, marketing covers the ideation and creation of a product or service, its packaging and how it is delivered into the hands of your target customers. It covers the strategies a company uses to prepare its product or service for a market and how they take it and place it on a market to get maximum leverage and advantage in that market.

Let’s dive a little deeper into it. To fully understand the concept of marketing, we have to understand its root word, “Market” and the Suffix “-ING”.

“The word ‘market’ has been derived from the Latin word “Mercatus” which means to trade, merchandise or a place where business is transacted. When used in general sense, market means a place where goods and services are purchased and sold” – Wikiversity

The suffix “ing” means “denoting a verbal action, an instance of this, or its result. Example: fighting | outing | building.” – Oxford English Dictionary

So Marketing would literally in its basic meaning be the action, instance or result of transacting business in a place where goods and services are sold and purchased.

In the book, Expert Secrets, Steve J Larsen, defines it very aptly:

“The market is a location, not a person: To illustrate this point, let’s pretend that you are a fisherman and you live just outside a big village. You wake up, walk out of your hut, put on your sandals, and grab a basket of fish that you are going to sell for the day.

As you look out over the village, you see a hillside filled with lots of other huts. Your family is counting on you to sell those fish, and with the distance to the village there’s only enough time for you to set up and sell your fish in one spot today.

 So where do you carry your basket of fish?

I’ve asked this question on many stages now, and the majority of people respond, “You go wherever there’s the most people!” That’s right! You’ll walk to a location where many people are already in the habit of going, otherwise known as a marketplace or market. A market is a place for buyers and sellers to meet and exchange goods and services.”

So a market is not a person. A market is the place where your audience is coming to buy. The selection of the right location whether online or offline, where your target customers are congregating and the strategies and tactics of how you prepare, take to and place your products or services in that location to stand out from your competition and attract, engage and delight your customers is the subject of marketing.

Whether you’re selling fish at a fish market or you’re selling digital products on the internet, knowing who your customers are, where they are, what they need and want are the basics of any successful marketing.

If your customers are on Amazon, then you would open an Amazon store. If your customers spend time on Instagram, then you would run ads on Instagram to attract them and pull them into your website. If your customers are at the local mall, then you would set up shop there.

How you plan to attract, interest, and capture customers in that location to sell your products and services is the basics of marketing.

Choosing your market is VERY important. I used to think that a market that I’m entering would have no influence on my success in that market. I just needed to create, sell and deliver a product or service and I’d do well.

After personally launching over 4 dozen products and services in 18 different markets and helping over 100 clients sell their products and services in over 100 markets, I can’t overstate the importance of choosing the right market. It is the difference between becoming a 7-figure business in less than a year and being a struggling, 5-figure business for 5 years. Selling in the wrong market is an uphill battle and selling in the right market can propel your business to the moon.

The selection of the right market can make or break your business. It will determine your marketing strategy. It will determine how you do business. It will determine the amount of money, time and effort you have to spend on your branding, marketing and sales. It will determine your pricing and your offerings.

Any market is governed by DEMAND and SUPPLY. Those who have a NEED for a solution DEMAND products or services to FULFIL these NEEDS. Our job as business owners is to SUPPLY the solution that fulfils their needs. The amount of demand and the amount of supply determines the market. And those are the BASICS that will never change whether you’re selling online, offline or in the Metaverse.

To fully understand this important point, I give you a quote from the book $100 Million Offers by Alex Harmozi. He is undoubtedly one of the  greatentrepreneurs I look up to, making a $100 million dollar empire in three years at the age of 32.

“A marketing professor asked his students, “If you were going to open a hotdog stand, and you could only have one advantage over your competitors . . . which would it be . . . ?” “Location! ….Quality! …. Low prices! ….Best taste!”

The students kept going until eventually they had run out of answers. They looked at each other waiting for the professor to speak.

The room finally fell quiet.

The professor smiled and replied, “A starving crowd.”

You could have the worst hot dogs, terrible prices, and be in a terrible location, but if you’re the only hot dog stand in town and the local college football game breaks out, you’re going to sell out. That’s the value of a starving crowd.

At the end of the day, if there is a ton of demand for a solution, you can be mediocre at business, have a terrible offer, and have no ability to persuade people, and you can still make money.”

Hormozi, Alex. $100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No (pp. 32-33). Kindle Edition.

When selecting a profitable market, one must look at several factors:

1. Is there even a market? Are there people searching for solutions to this? Is there a search volume for this market on Google? Are people talking about it?
2. Does it have unfulfilled needs?
3. Are other successful people selling to this market?
4. Does it have purchasing power? You don’t want to sell a great product and then try to sell it to broke high-school students.
5. Is it easy to target and reach?
6. Is it growing or declining?

So, if you already have an existing business or product or service, ask yourself these questions. Determine the market you are in and be clear on its potentials or lack of it? Look at the overall scene. Don’t get too stuck on your business. Expand your vision and see the macrocosm in relation to your business and offerings.

Choose the right market. And don’t make the mistake I did of being arrogant and completely ignoring the market and trying to grow a business in an oversaturated market.

If you still have trouble with selecting the right market or you want to get an in-depth consultation and market research done for your business, you can reach out to us and we would be glad to help.