The Significance of Marketing for Successful Entrepreneurship (Essay Sample)

Marketing for Entrepreneurs
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Marketing for Entrepreneurs
Marketing is one foundational business function that entrepreneurs must use appropriately to launch and develop new ventures successfully. It involves various activities associated with attracting and retaining loyal customers. The critical secret to successful marketing is to understand the needs and demands of targeted clients. Entrepreneurs should then provide goods and services that satisfy those needs and desires. They also need to offer customer service, value, and convenience. Unfortunately, there seems to be a noticeable gap between actual marketing practices and sound marketing principles among entrepreneurs. With more intense competition and turbulent global business environment, entrepreneurs must understand the significance of developing innovative marketing strategies to remain competitive and sustainable.
Personal selling is a vital activity for entrepreneurs on an informal level through professional networking. Leveraging industrial and personal connections is a core factor to success. For instance, the founder of Giro, Jim Gentes, personally attended high profile races, including top triathlons, demonstrating his helmets to the best cyclists. He understood and acknowledged the value of endorsements from world-class athletes. Similarly, direct marketing is an essential tool for communicating with customers. Digital marketing strategies, such as catalogs, permission email, direct mail, telemarketing, and infomercials, are ideal for developing an active database for future marketing analysis (Baltes, 2015). Entrepreneurs can, therefore, depend on direct marketing campaigns to be local, broad-based, or limited in scope.
With the increased application of databases and technology in marketing, the practice of one-to-one strategy has become pervasive. According to Arnett & Wittmann (2014), one-to-one marketing is an interactive technique that enables companies to address their customers at the individual level. By analyzing customers' previous purchasing behavior and other critical information, firms can respond to clients' needs accordingly. Databases allow entrepreneurs not only to personalize communication but also to design customer-specific messages (Baltes, 2015). Additionally, companies can depend on such information to build customer relationship management system to help them compile and manage relevant primary data about their clients. By capturing the right metrics such as cost of customer acquisition and average lifetime value of consumers, organizations can develop effective strategies to attract their targeted audience.
Guerilla marketing strategies are crucial techniques that demand creativity and ingenuity. The plan demonstrates a company's understanding of its clients. It recognizes that satisfying consumers is the foundation of a successful enterprise. Ashley & Tuten (2015) affirm that guerilla marketing mainly intends to build practical strategies for success by satisfying the customers' needs. It aims to pinpoint the specific target markets and determine consumer needs through research. When a company strives to analyze its competitive advantages and develop a guerilla marketing strategy around them, it designs a marketing mix that meets customers' expectations.
Successful entrepreneurs often rely on the unique advantages of their small companies to build a competitive edge over large rivals. Their attention, organizational and managerial flexibility, close contact with clients, and focus on service provide a solid foundation from which to develop a towering competitive edge (Baltes, 2015). Small enterprises can practically exploit their size to beco