Does marketing really matter? Come-on!

Dear Aunty B:

A better quote from Emerson would be this: “For every dollar spent on building the mouse trap, it takes another $7 to get people along the path to your door.”

Is that some sort of proper statistic, or did you just pull it out of your butt? If it’s real, it’s certainly an interesting number, and I would be very keen to know where it came from, before I re-quote it mercilessly.

Cheers.

Paul D Hauck,
Sydney

Dear Paul,

Mind your manners. You must be living under a rock if you haven’t heard of the $1/$7 stat.

Is it true? Whaddayathink?

It depends on the product, the industry, your marketing plan, how fast you plan to grow and the channels to market.

If it is a great piece of software and you are marketing it globally, it will cost at least seven times the commercialisation costs over several years.

Read Phil Ruthven on expanding into new markets.

Paul, I am making a point to those innovators and existing businesspeople who have not a marketing instinct in their body, that they have to understand the very important part that marketing plays.

You can’t believe the number of people we see who have great mousetraps. While some can also sell, they often have no idea how to market. Worse, they don’t respect marketing or marketers. Just yesterday I was told by a well regarded businessman (no, I am not telling you who) that marketing people in large companies serve no purpose whatsoever because products sell themselves.

So Paul, feel free to quote this far and wide because it is compelling and makes the point: marketing is hugely important, can be costly and the marketing strategy must be implemented every single day by everyone in the company.

Now about my butt…

Aunty B.