Marketing is the single most important element to business success, which is why it's so important that you understand how it all works. And that's exactly why in this episode, I'm going to be sharing with you how marketing works and why you need to care. Let's get to it. Hey there. My name is AG are hurt, marketing, strategist and welcome to the marketing show. All right, let's talk marketing specifically, just why this often misunderstood. And crazy skill of marketing rarely gets the full credit that it truly deserves. And it does deserve a whole lot of credit. After all, as I alluded to at the very beginning, actually, as I said, just outright marketing is really the single most important element to business success, because without marketing, you don't really have business because it's marketing's job to attract more customers generate more leads in essentially help making sales easy and effortless. Ultimately, marketing's job is to get you more customers. And without customers, you don't have a business. So if you want to reach more people, if you want to make a bigger impact, if you want to make a whole lot more money, you're going to need marketing. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
So let's start at the top and just accept the fact that everything is marketing. You see the very first thing that you need to understand about just how important and how integrated marketing is to everything that you do. Well, you need to understand that everything thing that you are doing or not doing is communicating something to other people, whether it's friends and family, or whether its prospects, customers or potential clients, the way that you dress the way that you speak the accent that you have the video that you do, or that you don't make the way that you answer the phone, the way that you write an email. Pretty much everything that you do is communicating something to your customers, to your prospects to your ideal clients. The reality is, is that you and I? Well, we're being judged all the time. We're being judged on appearance were being judged by what we say. We're being judged by the quality of the service, or the products that we put out there in the marketplace. So it only makes sense to try to control as much of the narrative as possible. That's really what marketing is all about. It's essentially taking control back and really influencing and persuading the perception that other people have about you, because, like it or not, they're forming a perception. They're making judgments, and they're making them very, very quickly.
So it only makes sense to try to control that as much as humanly possible. Well, when you add to the fact that first impressions are made almost in the blink of an eye, and they tend to last a really, really long time. Well, it only makes sense even more so to try to control all of your marketing and try to ensure that you're really putting your best foot forward. And that's what this is all about. It's not about being fake or cheesy or slimy or sleazy sales, or anything like that. Rather, what it is is it's highlighting the best aspects of you, the best aspects of your business, and making sure that that is the first thing that people see when they come to your business when they first are introduced to you or anything like that. All right. So if we can agree on the fact that everything is marketing, well, let's move on to the next point, which is, marketing is communicating value. One of the biggest misrepresentations or myths, or misunderstandings about marketing to those outside of the industry is that marketing is sales or marketing is advertising. And well, it's true that there is a little bit of overlap there. And advertising is definitely a part of marketing. It's not everything fact that would be kind of like calling taxes, all of accounting or supply and demand all of Economics or anything like that. It just doesn't make sense. Really, marketing is a much broader, much bigger picture, involving all sorts of different things, but at the core of it, what it is is about communicating a message, ideally communicating value, even more, ideally, communicating your value to your ideal target market.
Essentially what you're trying to do with your marketing is you're trying to, again, put your best foot forward. You're trying to show up in the best possible light and letting other people know why they should care about what it is that you're doing and how you can serve them, how you can benefit them, and ultimately, how you can help them achieve their goals. That's really what it's all about marketing that works marketing that's effective. Well, it's all about the other person. It's about being empathetic. It's about understanding where they're coming through from, and what they're going through and essentially how to position your business in a way that solves that for them. On the other hand, marketing that doesn't work that well is all very selfish and business entered. But we'll cover that in a minute, one of the biggest differentiators in marketing between those campaigns. It really knock it out of the park. They really dominate. They really click. They possibly even go viral. Well, they're relatable. There are thent akande their relevant to the situation into the time that we're going through whether that's right now, or whether it's some weird time in the future, or some crazy time in the past. Whatever it is, it has to be relatable. And in order to be relatable, you've really got to have your finger on the pulse of society, and of most specifically, your customers, their pains, their problems, their wants, their dreams, their goals, their tires, everything that's going on inside their minds, you've got to try to be as empathetic as possible.
You've really got to put yourself into their shoes and try to see things from their eyes and their perspective. And when you do this, when you have customer-centric marketing, well, you can knock it out of the park, because really, all you're going to give them is exactly what they want. And by understanding them, well, you're going to know what they want, which makes it that much easier, unsuccessful marketing, on the other hand, is all about the business. It's all about you. It's selfish. It's really irrelevant. And this is really hard to say. And it's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of business owners. But the reality is, is the customers really don't care about you that much only in so much as you can help them achieve what they're really after, after all, just think about your interactions with other businesses. I mean, sure, you might like the owner. You might have a good rapport and a good relationship.
But if they stop providing value, if they stop being of any service to you, well, you might still be friends, but you're not going to still do business with them. The takeaway point I really want to hit home for you here is at the better that you understand your customer, the better that your marketing will be, and the better you're going to be able to communicate value, which is, ultimately, what marketing is all about. All right. So now that we've got that covered, let's dive into the weeds a little bit with how does marketing actually work? And I appreciate this is an incredibly complex topic. So let's break it down into some very simple Parts. Marketing is really just a combination of other Sciences or other Specialties like psychology and economics and buyer Behavior. Definitely an element of communication in there. Also, probably some facets of design. I mean, I guess you could probably reference a little bit of biology. The point is, it's kind of a hodgepodge. But what it really comes down to is people, people are complicated like super complicated, which is why anybody that just comes out and tells you here just do this and you'll automatically make sales. Well, they're probably selling you something like snake oil, oceanfront property in Arizona. I don't know some kind of scam. The reality is that marketing is complex, and it's new. I understand it's difficult to just go out there and and toss out some broad generalizations. Because the reality is, is that what's going to work for you and your Market with your business with your specific and unique customers? Well, it's going to be just that it's going to be unique and specific to you and your market and your unique customers and your business and all of those things.
So essentially marketing is pretty deep stuff. But don't let that dissuade you. Don't let that stop you from really doing some solid marketing, because you don't need a PhD to make all this stuff work. Rather, if you want to look cat in a much better way and the way that I choose to look at it, and to hopefully convince you of is that marketing is actually pretty simple. When you get down to the bones of it, which is marketing is about communicating value. Marketing is about helping other people. Now, I talked about this at the beginning that the better you understand your customer, the better your marketing is going to be. That's really what this is all about. It's about trying to have a conversation with your customers, trying to figure out what their pains and problems are, how your business is uniquely positioned to solve them, and then really just showing them that what you've got can them achieve their goals. That's marketing. Just show people how you can help them give them what they want job done. Now, of course, you can take it deeper if you want to. And my suggestion is definitely start with the basic stuff. But over time, well, it's kind of fascinating and figure out just what makes people tick, why we do the things they do, why we buy the things that we buy and why we make emotional, rather than logical decisions in that case, got a couple suggestions for you. One of the most interesting fields that you can start to look into and study is a field called behavioral economics. It's really, really interesting stuff on the psychology of why people do the things they do promise it's going to be pretty surprising. You're going to learn that people make decisions emotionally first, and then justify them and back them up logically, rationally later, but pretty much after the decisions already been made. And again, this brings us full circle, right back to the beginning of everything is marketing, and you better be taking control of the narrative that's going on in other people's minds, and really putting your best foot forward when you're making those first impressions and having those touch points with your customers.
Now, this is hopefully going to be pretty easy to accept, because any time that you're doing any kind of communication while you're essentially putting yourself out there, and that means that you're opening yourself up for criticism, or for somebody to argue with you or, or just say, you have no idea what you're doing. And obviously that takes an element of Courage. Well, marketing takes that, and it throws gas on the fire, because your goal with marketing needs to try to reach as many people as possible, which means you're opening yourself up a whole lot more. Here's a fun fact, your haters, the people that are going to disagree with. You just be downright nasty. Well, they're not a specific number, rather there a percentage. So let's say that one percent of the population is just knocking like what you say. Well, if you're reaching 100 people, that's just going to be one person before reaching 1000 people, it's going to be 10. What about 100000? What about a million? You can see as it grows, you're going to be experiencing a little more criticism, and a little more kick back to your stuff. Marketing is Seth. Godin says, is The Bold and courageous Act of essentially going out to the market and saying, here I made this, I hope you like it. Some people are going to love it.
