The following will give you an idea of Dave Cousin’s philosophy on marketing:

“A new business starts from an idea to offer a product or service to a group whom one believes demands this product at a price where the business can make a profit, this is marketing at its most basic but also its most important, if you can’t show that people want what you are offering then stop right there.

Marketing is far more than just promotion, as some people suppose, Marketing is about forming a full offering which people demand and from which you can derive profit, this profit should ideally be more than you can make with another offering although other factors such as running a business that those running it will enjoy, however this is secondary to making an offering from which you can at least break even.

Having mentioned that if you cannot show that people want what you are offering then do more research or try something else, far too many people start from the wrong point, either ‘this is a business I would enjoy running I will worry about marketing later’, or ‘this is a business I can afford to setup I will worry about marketing later’.

The offering you choose is made up of the marketing mix and until you have this right you can’t move ahead you may find after research that there is no way to make a suitable offering so ideally you need to know this before investing in setting up a business. Good Marketing Planning and decent Market Research can significantly minimise risk.

To start you should have an idea of what you are going to offer and you will need a unique selling point, it could be a whole variety of things giving you a competitive advantage such as that you have a new manufacturing technique allowing you to offer a better product or a cheaper product, it could be that you have an idea for a unique advertising campaign or it may be that you will be the only business offering a particular service in a particular location but there must be something. From here you will have an idea of who your target market might be, though this may need further research.

The marketing mix should generally come from analysing a target market and trying to offer them a product they want at a price they want to pay at an outlet they are happy to use promoted in a way that will ensure they make a purchase, or in some cases another most wanted response. This is the same for B2B and B2C and for services though with a few extra considerations.
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Dave Cousin, founder and owner of Trig Point.