It didn’t sound credible, or wise.
You see I was conditioned to see “marketing” as a sort of “side activity” of a business that was bolted-on to the “real work” of delivery it spends most of the time doing. And I bet many of you have been conditioned in exactly the same way.
But you know what, we’re wrong.
It was Peter Drucker who said that a business only has two functions: marketing and innovation. And everything else is just a side-show. And since at a push we could actually define innovation as a subset of marketing (since you are innovating things with the express purpose of appealing to the market), we could pretty much say there is only ONE function: marketing.
This is what you should spend 70% of your time doing.
This is where you should be pouring your energies.
This is the task the founder should own.
Of course one reason people don’t realise that marketing is the only job, is because they define it too narrowly. They think it means “doing ads”, and can’t fathom how they could ever dedicate 70% of their time to such a limited task.
But instead, I’d encourage you to define it this way:
Marketing = Activities to better connect your product to the market.
This means it also contains:
- Talking to customers
- Refining your product
- Coming up with growth ideas
- Analysing and optimising your funnel
- Meeting people and networking
- Writing and speaking on social
- Identifying blockers
- Tweaking pricing
- Creating upsells / downsells
- Etc etc
In other words, more than enough to keep you busy.
To be honest, the delivery part of any business should be largely systematised and routine. It should deliver massive value, but it shouldn’t take massive time. You get in a groove, and just keep repeating it.
But the thing about marketing is that it is always NEW. You are always having to come up with ideas, and move on to the next thing, in order to keep your business alive and relevant.
That’s why it takes up so much time.
So analyse your day.
Break down your tasks.
And figure out just how much time could reasonably be called “marketing”. Because if it’s anything below 50%, I can assure you that the solution to your problems is right there.
P.S. Do you want to dedicate more time to what truly propels your business forward?
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