Marketing is essential to the success of any business. I don’t care what you are selling, whether it be a service or a product, if it is a necessity of life or a luxury, marketing is the discipline within any business that attracts customers to you. Then why do well-meaning business people put off marketing like it was akin to paying taxes? Most of the time it has to do with risk. Marketing can be a risky proposition with no sure promise of a return. However, with no risk, there is no return on investment – that’s the way business operates. And without marketing, you simply cannot operate successfully.

Here are five common excuses for not moving forward with a marketing plan. If you are using any of these, I can guarantee you are stifling growth in your business.

I cannot afford to market my business

When it is working properly, marketing will pay for itself over and again. Business icon Peter Drucker was fond of saying this about marketing: "The business enterprise has two - and only two - basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” Most people I meet have no idea how to measure the success of their marketing efforts. The big measurement is the bottom line. Are you making more money, adding new customers, keeping the clients you have coming back for more? They know money is coming in the business, but they don’t know exactly how the customer comes to them, how they were initially attracted to their business. A good marketing plan will help you measure your success in marketing. Once you see this connection you will see where your marketing dollars are investments and not costs.

We did some marketing last year and I think we are good for this year

In a free market, if you are not marketing your business, you will eventually be overtaken by your competition. Marketing is not something you do once a year, like buying your wife a birthday gift, and you are good for another year. Marketing is an ongoing strategy to draw business inside your doors. A good marketing plan is perpetual.

I have a sales team, so I don’t need marketing

Marketing is a very broad discipline. I am of the opinion that marketing is not just the job of the person in your company with a marketing title on their business card. It is the effort of the entire company. How the customer is treated from sale to delivery all falls under the marketing umbrella. How so? One of the tasks of marketing is to put your business brand in a favorable light. You may have a great logo and great prices, but if you treat customers like they are something to be scraped from the bottom of your shoes, you will lose them. What is sometimes lost is that customer service has as much to do with your brand as anything else you will do. It all falls under marketing. If you think you don’t need marketing because you have a sales team, you are fooling yourself because marketing is the job of everyone in the company. With social media so big and so immediate, today that fact is truer than ever before in my business experience.

Customers must be happy, no one ever complains to me

All you need to know to move forward in business is commonly found in the opinions of your customers. In today’s environment, people expect that you take their opinions seriously. One of the reasons that social media has become so big is it gives people a forum to say whatever they want. People have an opinion of your business. It would be very smart of you to find out what they think. That may come in the form of a customer satisfaction survey. It may be getting face-to-face in front of your clients and asking what they think. But when you get this feedback, what are you going to do with it? Most companies who do customer surveys compile a report and proceed to do nothing with the data. A good marketing plan will help you overcome obstacles that your customers point out. It will also help you promote the good things about your company. If you ask a customer his opinion, whether it be good or bad, you should have a marketing plan to take action on the information you gather.

We’re just not ready to market ourselves yet

If you are not ready to market your business products and services, why are you in business? The job of marketing is to attract business to your company, which is essential to keeping your doors open. I realize that when a new product or service is being developed, there is a time when it is not quite ready to come out of the oven. However, too often this is an excuse to procrastinate. Your products and services have a life cycle. It is best to get the word out about them as soon as you can. Marketing is key to all of this.

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Photo illustration by AnsonLu