Answer:

Being a successful entrepreneur often means being able to balance the many different aspects of a business, such as financing, accounting, and management. One of the most important of those aspects is marketing. After all, if no one hears about the new product, how can it be successful? According to marketing research company CB Insights, in a survey of 101 companies that failed, 14 percent of them failed due to poor marketing.2 Marketing is an umbrella term given to those activities that companies use to identify consumers and convert them into buyers for the purposes of achieving a profit. No matter the size of the enterprise, marketing lays the foundation for how a company reaches and serves its target customers. Whether it’s a global brand such as PepsiCo or Apple, a small- to mid-size company such as Birchbox, or a small restaurant or local gym, marketing refers to the core strategies companies use to reach and sell to customers. As you might expect, the way entrepreneurs market their new product is somewhat different from how a large company markets an established brand.

Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing for large businesses such as Coca-Cola, Disney, and Dell tends to focus on managing and growing existing programs and brands. Companies like these enjoy greater resources such as substantial financial support and large numbers of marketing professionals to steer their efforts. However, marketing for small- and medium-sized businesses (those with 500 or fewer employees and less than $7.5 million of yearly receipts, as defined by the Small Business Administration)3 is different because financial resources are limited, and it is often the entrepreneur alone who is in charge of marketing efforts. If they do have funds for marketing expenses, they might use a small agency on a fee-for-project basis.

As you have learned in previous chapters, small start-ups are usually tight on resources, so they need to augment their resources through creativity and hard work. While having limited resources creates obvious challenges, being small also has its advantages. For example, it allows new companies to be more flexible, agile, and creative than their established competition. These qualities can allow new companies to disrupt their industries and become major global players by employing entrepreneurial marketing practices.

Entrepreneurial Marketing

On a basic level, entrepreneurial marketing is a set of unconventional practices that can help start-ups and younger firms emerge and have an edge in competitive markets. The main difference between these and traditional approaches is that entrepreneurial marketing tends to focus on satisfying the customer and building trust by providing innovative products and services that disrupt or appeal to a specific market. Table 8.1 provides an overview of differences between traditional and entrepreneurial marketing.

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