Business is generally a “small c” conservative affair. It favors people with plans and a balanced approach. Even mavericks and high-risk takers go into situations with plans. Not all successes are planned and the best plans are fluid, but planning is important for business success. This is true for market changes (expanding or shifting markets), product launches and marketing. Marketing requires an interesting sort of planning because of how it’s tied to all other aspects of the business. Ultimately a new product launch can die easily because of a bad marketing business plan, or succeed because of a good one.
No matter how good a product or service is, the fact of the matter is that if no one knows what’s being offered they won’t know to get it. One example of the effectiveness of a good marketing business plan is how Apple has managed to brand and market itself. At the end of the day Apple has done little invention, mostly they run on older technology smooth it out for users and market it well. The marketing goes beyond their (mostly) good ads to include things like a sleeker design, which helps foster the high tech feel.
This isn’t to say that Apple’s products are bad, but they’re functionally is no better in many (important) ways from other companies. They do however have the ability to sell their products for a much higher price; this is largely due to having an effective marketing business plan. There are other pieces of evidence for the value and success of marketing business plans. For example, in taste tests people generally can’t tell brand name products from generic products, yet will happily pay more for the brand name product most of the time. Quite often, this is because we associate that brand name with quality. Just as some vintners can be confused and talk themselves into liking a cheap wine if told it’s expensive or valuable, brand name association can raise the quality of a product- even if it’s the same product but comes at a cheaper price.
Now, none of this means you can get away with having a bad product or that a business marketing plan replaces good product design or service staff. It does mean that you can be much more successful if you brand and market yourself correctly. You need to know what you want but discussing your plans with professionals can be a great assistance to any project. To that end you want to make sure you’re working with something known as an “interactive marketing agency/company.” The interactive means that you actually interact back and forth with them instead of just giving them your money and reputation and assuming they’ll do the right thing. By being able to work back and forth you combine the value of your experience in business with their experience in marketing.
