How Marketing Actually Works: From Understanding a Customer to Creating Demand
Marketing works as a connected sequence: understand the market, choose customers, understand the problem and buying situation, create the right offer, position it, price it, communicate value, build proof, make the brand easy to remember and easy to buy, create and capture demand, help sales convert it, deliver the promise, retain customers, measure economics and learn.
Fiease Marketing Foundation Series — M04
Direct answer: Marketing works as a connected sequence: understand the market, choose customers, understand the problem and buying situation, create the right offer, position it, price it, communicate value, build proof, make the brand easy to remember and easy to buy, create and capture demand, help sales convert it, deliver the promise, retain customers, measure economics and learn.
A common marketing meeting begins with a channel.
“Should we advertise on LinkedIn?”
“Should we run Google Ads?”
“Should we do SEO?”
“Should we make videos?”
“Should we attend more exhibitions?”
Those may eventually become useful questions. They are rarely the best first questions.
Before asking which platform should we use?, ask:
Whom are we trying to influence, what situation are they in, what value can we create for them, and what must they understand or believe before they will seriously consider buying?
Marketing is not a campaign. It is a sequence of connected commercial decisions.
A practical sequence is:
Understand the market
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Choose customers
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Understand the problem and buying situation
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Create the offer
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Position and price it
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Translate value into understandable messages
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Create proof
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Build mental and physical availability
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Create and capture demand
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Help sales convert demand
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Deliver the promise
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Retain customers
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Measure revenue, margin and cash
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Learn and improve
Real markets are messier than this sequence. Customers loop backwards. Projects pause. More stakeholders enter. Competitors react. Requirements change. But the sequence is still useful because it forces management to answer the right questions before buying more media.
Step 1: What does it mean to understand the market?
Understanding the market means more than knowing its total size.
Management needs to understand:
who buys,
why they buy,
when they buy,
what alternatives they use,
how the purchase is made,
which capabilities matter,
where profit exists,
what is changing,
what prevents entry.
Suppose a pump manufacturer learns that the Indian industrial pump market is worth a large amount. Interesting, but strategically incomplete. Which applications? Which industries? New equipment or replacement? Direct sales or distributors? Standard products or engineered systems? Who specifies the equipment? Who approves the supplier? What causes customers to switch?
A market statistic becomes useful only when it changes a decision.
Does market research require an expensive study?
Not necessarily.
Market understanding can come from sales records, customer interviews, lost-deal analysis, distributors, support cases, search data, industry statistics, competitor analysis and field observation.
The classic market-orientation literature is useful here. Kohli and Jaworski described market orientation around generating market intelligence, disseminating it across the organisation and responding to it. Narver and Slater similarly examined customer orientation, competitor orientation and interfunctional coordination.
The practical point is critical: insight has value only when the organisation acts on it.
A research report sitting in marketing does not help if engineering never sees the recurring product complaint, sales never sees the new positioning logic and finance never sees the customer economics.
Step 2: Why must a business choose customers?
Because resources are limited.
No business has unlimited sales capacity, marketing budget, inventory, service resources, management attention or product-development capability.
“Everyone” is therefore rarely a useful target market.
Suppose a finance advisory says, “We help businesses.” A twelve-person service firm, a ₹30-crore distributor and a ₹300-crore manufacturer may have completely different systems, budgets, risks and buying processes.
Marketing requires prioritisation.
What is segmentation actually for?
Segmentation should help management make better decisions. It is not an exercise in creating decorative personas.
Useful B2B segmentation dimensions can include:
industry,
application,
company size,
operating complexity,
buying frequency,
technical requirement,
service intensity,
geography,
commercial attractiveness.
Imagine a component manufacturer with customers in many sectors. Segmenting only by state may help sales territories. But perhaps the commercially decisive distinction is mission-critical versus non-critical applications. Mission-critical users may value reliability, emergency availability and technical service far more than routine users.
That segmentation changes positioning, inventory, pricing and sales resources.
What makes a segment attractive?
Not size alone.
A commercially attractive segment may combine:
an important problem,
sufficient ability to pay,
strategic fit,
reachable customers,
manageable competition,
attractive margin,
repeat demand,
acceptable service requirements,
acceptable working-capital economics.
A very large market can be unattractive if customers demand low prices, 120-day credit, heavy customisation and extensive after-sales support.
This is the first major connection between marketing and finance: revenue potential is not the same as economic attractiveness.
Step 3: What is the customer's real problem?
The customer's problem is not necessarily your product category.
A factory does not naturally want “Model 475A pump.” It may want to prevent failure, handle a different fluid, increase capacity, reduce energy use or replace an unreliable supplier.
A founder does not naturally want “management accounting.” The founder may want to understand why profit is increasing while cash is disappearing.
The product is the seller’s language. The problem is the customer’s language.
Why does this distinction matter?
Because product-defined companies can become blind to changes in how customer problems are solved.
Theodore Levitt’s Marketing Myopia remains useful precisely because it warns businesses against defining the market too narrowly around the current product.
A company thinking “we sell drilling machines” can miss a new way of creating holes. A company thinking “we help manufacturers create accurate holes efficiently” is more likely to notice alternative technologies.
The marketing question is therefore:
What outcome is the customer actually trying to achieve?
Step 4: What is a buying situation?
Customers are not permanently ready to buy. Usually something changes.
For industrial equipment, triggers may include:
breakdown,
new plant,
capacity expansion,
regulation,
process change,
vendor failure,
maintenance escalation.
For finance advisory:
cash pressure,
fundraising,
unreliable MIS,
rapid growth,
margin decline,
new CFO.
For sales consulting:
falling pipeline,
low win rate,
new market entry,
forecast unreliability,
rapid sales-team expansion.
These situations matter because marketing becomes much stronger when the brand is connected to circumstances that cause category demand.
What are Category Entry Points?
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute uses Category Entry Points (CEPs) for cues associated with entering a buying category. CEPs are used to understand how buyers retrieve brands from memory when a need or situation occurs.
For Fiease, potential CEPs might include:
“we are profitable but cash keeps getting tighter,”
“we do not trust the monthly numbers,”
“our marketing is active but we cannot explain what it is achieving,”
“our sales forecast is unreliable,”
“operations depend too much on particular people.”
Those are more commercially useful memory associations than generic “business consulting.”
Step 5: Who actually buys?
In simple purchases, one person may decide. In complex B2B purchases, several people may participate.
Academic research on B2B customer journeys explicitly incorporates buying centres, usage centres, relationships and multiple touchpoints rather than assuming a single linear decision-maker.
Consider a ₹2-crore manufacturing system.
Engineering evaluates technical suitability.
Operations evaluates implementation.
Procurement evaluates commercial terms and supplier risk.
Finance evaluates economic justification.
Management evaluates strategic consequences.
Marketing therefore cannot simply write “Decision-maker: Purchase Head.” The buying process is a system.
Does every stakeholder need different marketing?
Often they need different translations of the same core value.
Suppose the central proposition is reducing unplanned equipment failure.
For Engineering: failure mechanisms and technical design.
For Operations: uptime and maintenance implications.
For Finance: economic cost of downtime.
For Procurement: supplier credibility and lifecycle value.
One core proposition, several stakeholder lenses.
Step 6: What is the offer?
The offer is the complete package the customer is being asked to buy. It can include product, service, warranty, installation, training, support, delivery, payment terms, documentation and risk reduction.
Two businesses can sell similar physical products and create very different offers.
Hypothetical example
Supplier A sells:
Machine only.
Supplier B sells:
Machine + installation + operator training + preventive-maintenance plan + critical-spares package + response commitment.
The physical equipment may be comparable. The market offer is not.
Marketing therefore works on the exchange, not only the object.
Step 7: What is positioning?
Positioning answers:
Why should this chosen customer seriously consider this offer instead of the alternatives?
Positioning becomes weak when companies rely on words competitors can copy instantly:
Quality.
Service.
Innovation.
Customer first.
Global standards.
A useful position becomes specific about customer, context, problem and value.
Weak:
High-quality pumps and excellent service.
Stronger:
Application-engineered pumping systems for corrosive chemical processes where repeated failure creates significant production risk.
Good positioning makes later decisions easier: what content to create, which accounts sales should target, what evidence to show and what capabilities to emphasise.
Is positioning the same as a slogan?
No. A slogan may communicate positioning, but positioning is a strategic choice.
If the position is “premium reliability,” the business may need stronger engineering, warranty, service coverage, premium pricing and reference installations. If operations cannot support those elements, the position becomes merely a claim.
Step 8: Where does pricing enter?
Before promotion.
Pricing is part of the offer and affects both customer value and company economics. The traditional 4Ps place Price alongside Product, Place and Promotion because pricing is a core market decision.
Management needs to consider cost, margin, competitive alternatives, customer value, willingness to pay, segment economics and sales behaviour.
Is a lower price always better marketing?
No. Low price can increase attractiveness in price-sensitive categories. It can also destroy margin or signal lower value. High price can support premium positioning, but it can also simply be unaffordable or unjustified.
There is no universal “best” price. There is only a price that makes sense relative to customer value, alternatives and business economics.
Step 9: What does communicating value actually mean?
Customers often encounter features first. Marketing translates features into consequences.
Feature: automated reconciliation.
Functional consequence: fewer manual matching tasks.
Management consequence: faster close and fewer unexplained differences.
Commercial consequence: management can make decisions from reliable information earlier.
The same logic applies in manufacturing.
Feature: corrosion-resistant material.
Functional consequence: greater suitability in the relevant chemical environment.
Operational consequence: lower probability of premature failure, if properly selected and used.
Economic consequence: potentially lower downtime and maintenance cost.
Marketing turns product language into customer meaning without exaggerating what the evidence supports.
Step 10: What is the difference between a claim and proof?
A claim says:
Our machines are reliable.
Proof says:
Here is the operating history in comparable applications, the testing method and customers who can verify the experience.
A claim says:
We understand manufacturing finance.
Proof may include methodology, author expertise, detailed frameworks, relevant examples and transparent reasoning.
The greater the perceived risk, the more important proof becomes.
Why is proof a marketing responsibility?
Because buying happens under uncertainty. The customer cannot know the future. They estimate.
Evidence helps them estimate.
Useful proof can include:
customer references,
case evidence,
technical testing,
certifications,
demonstrations,
trials,
samples,
methodology,
documented process controls.
Good marketing makes legitimate evidence easy to inspect.
Should case studies promise similar results?
No. A case shows what happened in a particular situation. It does not guarantee another customer will achieve the same result.
Fiease should distinguish evidence of capability from guarantee of outcome. That distinction strengthens credibility instead of weakening sales.
Step 11: How should a business choose channels?
Only after understanding the customer, buying situation, message and decision process.
A channel should be chosen because it performs a specific marketing job.
Search
Useful when customers actively seek answers or suppliers.
Potentially useful for reaching professional audiences, distributing expertise and building future memory.
Useful for nurturing known audiences and customers.
Exhibitions
Useful for demonstrations, relationships, meetings, market intelligence and sales progression.
Distributors
Useful where local access, availability and relationships matter.
Direct sales
Useful where accounts are valuable and decisions complex.
The channel follows the buying system.
Why is “Which social platform should we use?” often the wrong first question?
Because it assumes the problem is reach.
The real problem may be weak offer, wrong segment, poor positioning, insufficient proof, low availability or poor sales conversion.
Increasing reach can magnify those problems rather than solve them.
Step 12: What is mental availability?
Mental availability is the probability that buyers notice, recognise or think of the brand in relevant buying situations.
Ehrenberg-Bass research uses CEPs and memory associations to help explain this. The practical implication is that customers cannot evaluate every supplier in existence. Brands that enter consideration have an advantage over brands that remain invisible.
Is mental availability the same as awareness?
No.
A buyer can recognise the name Fiease yet fail to think of Fiease when “profit is high but cash is tight.” That is awareness without a strong buying-situation association.
The stronger strategic objective is not merely “know our name.” It is “think of us when this problem occurs.”
Step 13: What is physical availability?
Physical availability means being easy to find and buy.
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s recent B2B research expands the idea beyond basic distribution through three dimensions:
Presence: be where buying happens.
Prominence: be easy to find there.
Portfolio: offer products or services that cover important customer needs.
For an industrial supplier, physical availability might mean regional sales coverage, distributors, stock, approved-vendor status, easy quotations, local service, technical documents and appropriate product variants.
You can create demand and still lose because buying is difficult.
Hypothetical example: availability can outweigh technical superiority
A buyer urgently needs a replacement component.
Supplier A is technically superior but can deliver in twelve days.
Supplier B is acceptable and available tomorrow.
Production downtime costs ₹4 lakh per day.
Choosing Supplier B may be completely rational. Availability has become part of value.
Step 14: What is demand creation?
Demand creation helps future customers recognise problems, understand solutions, remember suppliers and develop confidence before purchase becomes immediate.
Examples include category education, research, technical content, brand advertising, industry thought leadership, customer cases and events.
These activities may influence people who are not buying today.
What is demand capture?
Demand capture targets customers already expressing buying intent.
Examples include commercial search queries, quotation requests, supplier comparisons, high-intent website journeys and active account enquiries.
Businesses usually need some balance between future demand creation and current demand capture.
Is the 95-5 rule literally true?
Not for every market.
LinkedIn’s B2B Institute popularised the 95-5 idea to illustrate that in infrequently purchased B2B categories only a small share of potential customers may be in market at a given moment. The exact percentage depends on category purchase frequency and should not be used as a universal benchmark.
The principle is more important than the number:
Do not build the whole marketing system as if every potential customer is ready to buy today.
Why does that matter commercially?
If only a limited population is actively buying, pure short-term performance marketing causes competitors to fight for the same small group. Future buyers are ignored.
When those future buyers eventually enter the market, brands that invested in memory and trust may begin with an advantage.
That does not mean stopping lead generation. It means balancing current demand capture with future demand development.
Step 15: Where does sales enter?
When specific opportunities require individual interaction.
Marketing should make sales easier by creating recognition, positioning, proof, education and customer insight. Sales then discovers the specific context.
Useful sales questions include:
Why now?
What problem exists?
What happens if nothing changes?
Who is involved?
What outcome is required?
What alternatives are considered?
What technical or financial justification is needed?
Marketing gives the business a general theory of the market. Sales discovers the individual case.
Is the B2B journey really a funnel?
Only as a management simplification.
Real B2B journeys can be highly nonlinear. Customers research, speak to sales, pause, consult colleagues, return online, change specifications, add procurement, request demonstrations, delay and re-enter months later.
Academic research on B2B customer journeys similarly highlights multiple touchpoints, buying-centre actors, usage-centre actors and relationship dynamics.
Funnels are useful for managing pipeline. They should not be mistaken for literal descriptions of human behaviour.
Why is self-service information increasingly important?
Because buyers often want to research before talking to sales.
Recent Gartner research has reported a strong preference among many B2B buyers for self-directed digital stages and frustration with irrelevant seller outreach. Human interaction still matters where the buyer needs contextual judgement, technical explanation, reassurance or commercial coordination.
The marketing responsibility is therefore to provide enough high-quality information for customers to progress independently.
That can include technical pages, comparisons, calculators, methodology, FAQs, implementation explanations and case evidence.
Sales becomes more valuable when human judgement becomes valuable.
Step 16: Does marketing stop when the sale closes?
No. Now the promise is tested.
If marketing says “reliable delivery,” operations becomes the evidence.
If marketing says “easy implementation,” onboarding becomes the evidence.
If marketing says “responsive advisory support,” the advisory team becomes the evidence.
Customer experience is therefore part of future marketing.
Why does customer experience affect future demand?
Because existing customers generate renewals, repeat orders, references, reviews, case studies and recommendations.
Poor delivery makes future acquisition more expensive. Strong delivery makes future marketing easier.
This is why an organisation cannot fix a damaged customer experience with communications alone.
Step 17: What is retention's role?
Retention tests whether value continued after the initial sale.
A company obsessed with acquisition while ignoring retention may be filling a leaking bucket.
Marketing should learn:
Why do customers stay?
Why do they leave?
Which segments repeat?
Which customers expand?
Which promises are not being fulfilled?
What produces recommendations?
Post-purchase behaviour is market intelligence.
Step 18: How should marketing be measured?
Not with one metric.
Use a chain.
Market
Are we reaching appropriate customers?
Memory
Do relevant buyers recognise and remember us?
Demand
Are the right customers engaging and enquiring?
Opportunity
Is marketing contributing to credible commercial opportunities?
Sales
Do opportunities progress?
Revenue
What is won?
Economics
What margin, working capital and cash result?
Different activities influence different parts of the chain.
Why is revenue not enough?
Because revenue can hide unhealthy economics.
Hypothetical example
Marketing and sales increase annual revenue from ₹50 crore to ₹65 crore — 30% growth.
But average receivable days rise sharply. Inventory grows to support custom orders. Discounting increases. Gross margin falls. Cash deteriorates.
Marketing and sales succeeded at volume. The business may have failed at profitable growth.
That is why Fiease connects marketing to finance.
Step 19: How does marketing learn?
Every interaction creates information.
Lost sale: why?
New customer: what triggered purchase?
Customer complaint: which promise failed?
Search query: what is the market trying to understand?
Sales objection: which belief remains unresolved?
Distributor feedback: which product or geography is underserved?
Pricing resistance: wrong segment, weak value, weak proof or genuinely excessive price?
The marketing system should absorb these signals.
What is the difference between data and insight?
Data says: “60% of lost opportunities mention price.”
Insight asks why.
Possibility A: the product is genuinely too expensive.
Possibility B: sales targets low-value segments.
Possibility C: differentiation is weak.
Possibility D: economic value is not demonstrated.
Possibility E: salespeople record “price” because it is easier than investigating the real loss reason.
Data reports the pattern. Insight explains the mechanism.
Step 20: Why must marketing coordinate with operations?
Because demand has operational consequences.
A successful campaign can increase orders, service requests, inventory requirements, production load and delivery pressure. If capacity cannot absorb demand, marketing can create customer dissatisfaction.
Marketing forecasts should therefore sometimes connect to capacity, inventory, procurement and service resources.
Why must marketing coordinate with finance?
Because growth consumes resources.
Marketing decisions influence customer acquisition cost, price, discount, customer mix, payment terms, inventory, receivables and margin.
A customer can be attractive from a revenue perspective and unattractive from a cash perspective.
For example: large order, low margin, 120-day payment, high service intensity.
Commercial performance requires both views.
The Fiease Marketing Operating System
This is a Fiease synthesis designed to connect marketing with the rest of the business.
Layer 1 — UNDERSTAND
Market → Customer → Buying situation
Where should we compete? Whom should we prioritise? What causes them to act?
Layer 2 — CREATE VALUE
Problem → Offer → Price
What problem matters? What should we offer? What exchange makes sense for customer and company?
Layer 3 — CREATE MEANING
Positioning → Message → Proof
Why should they consider us? What must they understand? Why should they believe us?
Layer 4 — BUILD AVAILABILITY
Memory → Channel → Access
Will they think of us? Can they find us? Can they buy us?
Layer 5 — CONVERT AND DELIVER
Demand → Sales → Experience
Can interest become a decision? Can the company fulfil the promise? Will the customer stay?
Layer 6 — MEASURE ECONOMICS
Revenue → Margin → Working capital → Cash
Did growth create economic value? What should change?
The framework exists because businesses frequently optimise individual activities without understanding the system.
Hypothetical example: an ₹80-crore manufacturer builds a marketing system
Consider fictional Apex Flow Systems, an ₹80-crore B2B manufacturer. Management wants 25% growth. Its first instinct is “increase digital marketing.” A system-based approach produces a different plan.
Phase 1: Understand
Sales data shows three sectors contribute most profitable repeat business. Chemical processing has particularly strong fit. Customer interviews reveal common triggers: corrosion, seal failure, expansion and poor incumbent service.
Phase 2: Map the buying system
Maintenance, process engineering, procurement and plant management participate. Maintenance wants reliability. Engineering wants suitability. Procurement wants commercial confidence. Plant management wants continuity.
Phase 3: Rebuild the value proposition
Old: “Quality pumps at competitive prices.”
New focus: “Application-engineered pump solutions for corrosive processes where repeated failure and downtime are materially expensive.”
The new proposition must still be tested with actual customers.
Phase 4: Build proof
The company documents application experience, material-selection logic, testing, reference installations and service coverage. Marketing now has evidence instead of adjectives.
Phase 5: Build availability
Mental availability: technical guides, search content, engineering posts, trade presentations and case studies.
Physical availability: regional spares, distributor development, faster quotation and clear technical documentation.
Phase 6: Capture demand
Pages target high-intent searches. Paid search targets relevant application queries. Exhibition meetings focus on priority accounts. Distributors receive proper sales material.
Phase 7: Improve sales conversion
Discovery is redesigned around application, operating conditions, current failure, stakeholders and economic consequences. Technical evidence is supplied at the correct stage.
Phase 8: Connect operations
Demand forecasts are shared with production, procurement and service so the company does not promise delivery that capacity cannot support.
Phase 9: Connect finance
Finance tracks gross margin by segment, discounting, receivables, inventory consequences and customer profitability.
Now the company can distinguish good growth from expensive growth.
That is a marketing system.
Why do businesses so often start at the wrong end?
Because channels are tangible.
Management can easily approve ₹2 lakh for ads, ten posts per month or three exhibitions. It is harder to answer:
Who exactly should we serve?
What do they genuinely value?
Why are we different?
What evidence proves it?
Those questions require strategic judgement. Avoiding them does not make them disappear; it transfers ambiguity downstream.
Advertising receives an unclear message. Sales receives poor-quality demand. Operations receives unpredictable promises. Finance receives weak economics.
What should a business ask before launching another campaign?
Ask:
Who exactly is the priority customer?
What situation causes them to enter this market?
What are they trying to accomplish?
What alternatives do they currently use?
Why should our offer matter?
What position are we trying to occupy?
What must they believe before considering us?
What evidence supports that belief?
Where will they encounter us?
Can they easily evaluate and buy?
Can sales convert the opportunity?
Can operations fulfil the promise?
Will the business produce acceptable margin and cash?
Only then ask which campaign should run.
What must a customer believe before buying?
This is one of the most useful questions in marketing.
Every purchase requires some belief transition.
Finance advisory
Initial belief: “Our accounts are filed, therefore finance is under control.”
Required belief: “Compliance can be correct while management reporting, cash visibility and commercial control remain weak.”
Industrial equipment
Initial belief: “The existing machine still works, so replacement can wait.”
Required belief: “The economic and operational cost of continuing may now exceed the cost of change.”
New supplier
Initial belief: “Switching creates unnecessary risk.”
Required belief: “The new supplier has enough evidence, support and capability to make switching acceptably safe.”
Marketing changes commercially relevant beliefs through information, evidence, experience and memory — not through deception.
What should marketing never try to do?
It should not manufacture value that does not exist. It should not create fake proof. It should not hide unsuitable economics. It should not promise what operations cannot deliver. It should not pressure customers into an obviously poor fit.
Marketing is strongest when it makes genuine value easier to recognise.
Is there one perfect marketing process?
No. Consumer goods, industrial equipment, software, professional services, healthcare and distribution all have different buying systems.
The framework must be adapted.
But the underlying questions remain remarkably stable:
Who?
Why?
What?
Why us?
At what price?
With what proof?
Through which route?
How does the decision happen?
Can we fulfil it?
Did it create economic value?
The simplest model to remember
Marketing begins before communication.
It begins with understanding.
Then:
Understand the market.
Choose customers.
Understand their problem.
Create value.
Position it.
Price it.
Prove it.
Make the business easy to remember.
Make the offer easy to buy.
Create and capture demand.
Help sales convert it.
Deliver what was promised.
Retain the customer.
Measure revenue, margin and cash.
Learn and improve.
That is how marketing actually works.
And that is why the first question should almost never be “Which social-media platform should we use?”
The better first question is:
Who are we trying to influence, and what must become true in their mind and in our business before they will choose us?
Research references and further reading
American Marketing Association — What Is Marketing? — https://www.ama.org/the-definition-of-marketing-what-is-marketing/
American Marketing Association — The Four Ps of Marketing — https://www.ama.org/marketing-news/the-four-ps-of-marketing/
Theodore Levitt — Marketing Myopia, Harvard Business Review — https://hbr.org/2004/07/marketing-myopia
Kohli & Jaworski — Market Orientation, Journal of Marketing — https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299005400201
Ehrenberg-Bass Institute — B2B Reports — https://marketingscience.info/b2b-reports/
Ehrenberg-Bass Institute — Easy to Find: Being Where B2B Buying Happens — https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/easy-to-find-being-where-b2b-buying-happens
Gartner — B2B Buying Journey — https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey
Industrial Marketing Management — research on B2B customer journeys — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019850123000974