Marketing isn't just selling things, it's creating value and making people choose you
It's a simple saying: marketing is never a hammer。
When many small and medium-sized enterprises referred to marketing, three things came out of their minds: advertising, promotion and sales. They think marketing is a "sell things out" lesson. This understanding cannot be entirely incorrect, but it is as if marriage is understood to be a “certificate” — only rituals, not the rest of life。
I. Marketing and sales: strategy, then tactics, and not reverse order
Marketing is confused with sales and is even seen as part of sales. On the contrary: sales are part of marketing, not the other way around。
Marketing began before the product was born:
What's wrong with the client? Why would they pay
What kind of product can solve the problem? How much do they think is worth
How do we find them? How can they trust you
The answers to these questions form the market chassis. The sale is mainly about facilitating transactions through face-to-face networks of communication or channels that have been created, optimizing channels through data analysis, and providing input for marketing overlaps。
It's a metaphor:
Marketing is digging canals — studying the direction of the current, the terrain, where to turn。
The sale is watering -- bringing the water that has already been drawn to the fields。
If the canal is not well dug, and the water is strong enough, the water will run into someone else's fields。
Two typical scenarios are enough:
Scenario one: good marketing, usually not bad
Dyson rarely “buys three” and rarely calls a star, but his dust-free vacuum cleaners and digital motor blowers are available as soon as they come on the market. This is because it solves problems that others cannot solve at the product stage. The user gets a "value at this price" test and automatically recommends it. Sales are a natural result。
Scenario two: good sales, but bad marketing
One of the internet's red milk and tea brands used to create false flames by hiring people to line up, and the union stores were opened quickly, with alarming short-term sales. But the product itself is not competitive — the bottom is cheap, the milk is condensed, and services are in disarray. Consumers fell off the cliff with the previous buyback rate and the brand disappeared within two years. Its “sale” has been successful (swindling to the first wave), but marketing has failed completely — without creating real value and without building any trust relationships。
In summary, marketing is “sold for good” and sale is “sold for good”. The former determines whether the product itself has been purchased, while the latter determines whether the value can be realized. Marketing is a strategy and sales are a tactic; marketing is the reason, and sales are the result. Sales that are not supported by marketing are one-off luck — no more luck and no more business。
Ii. Four common misconceptions of modern people about marketing (and why they are wrong)
Misunderstanding one: marketing is advertising
Advertising is only one part of marketing - the precise dissemination of the value that has been created. If the product itself is worthless, the more the ad goes, the faster it dies. It's like a man with a big voice but no substance, the louder he screams, the farther he hides。
Misunderstanding 2: marketing is promotion (buying gifts, discounts, etc.)
Promotion is a stimulant for sale, which occasionally works, and daily usage leads consumers to become “no-sum” and brands to lose pricing. The doping was too much, and the body collapsed。
Misunderstanding three: marketing is a matter for marketing
This is a fatal misunderstanding. Real marketing begins at the moment of product definition. The success of apples is not through advertising, but through jobs' repeated work in the lab on that thing that can both call and listen to music. Marketing is a first-hand project, not a task for the marketing department。
Misunderstanding four: marketing's goal is a deal
Deal is never the end. The higher objective of marketing is to create “re-purchase” and “prospect”. The value of a satisfied old client is 5 to 25 times that of a new client. The only people who care about a deal are always looking for new clients, always starting from scratch。
Reunderstanding marketing: from “sale” to “love”
Only the latter two count for real marketing, the first being essentially “marketing” — but most people see it as the whole marketing。
First tier: trade-oriented marketing (the “marketing” that most people think)
The main focus is on “business as usual”, with the tools of outreach, promotion and monogamy. The problem is, you can drop the price, you can go next door; you do advertising, and rich two-generation rivals throw more. There's no moat on this road, there's no loyalty on the part of the client - who goes cheap with whom. It's not marketing, it's marketing。
Second tier: relationship marketing (real marketing entry)
Start focusing on the full life cycle value of clients. The typical representative is costco: on average, only 11 per cent of the gross commercial maturity rate, but the membership rate exceeds 90 per cent, with members ' fees earning billions of dollars annually. Costco does not “sells things to its members”, but rather “selection good goods for its members”. Marketing went from "what to sell you this time" to "what to make you pay to become a permanent member and always come to me for it."。
Third level: value marketing (the highest form of marketing)
Let the customer move from “like” to “identify”. Patagonia advertised “don't buy this jacket” during the black 5 sales season, calling for a reduction in unnecessary consumption, resulting in an increase in sales. It attracts a group of people who share “environmentally friendly, sustainable” values, not just consumers, but brand followers. The highest level of marketing is that people choose you for "i agree, i like, i love," not because you're cheap or convenient。
In the current market environment, how does marketing work? (bottom logic)
Many will ask: " how can you create a reputation when you have always emphasized reputations and relationships, but a new brand that no one knows? Where did the first users come from without advertising and traffic
To answer that question, we need to understand three bottom concepts: what is traffic? What's the flow dividend? Why is it gone
4. 1 three-tier meaning of traffic
First level: user access behaviour - how many people are in the store (substantive or online)。
Second tier: sources of access — they were searched, attracted by the media, or suggested by relatives and friends
Third tier: business value - the flow itself is worthless, and the value is converted income. The true value of a flow is determined by whether it is billed, repurchased, recommended。
A key insight: “flows” that many firms buy at great cost, in fact “one-off flows” — come and go and never return. It's cheaper and expensive. And the flow of traffic through monuments is expensive and cheap because it brings confidence and buy-back。
4. 2 what is the flow dividend? Why is it gone
The flow dividend is essentially “a period of time when the value of the flow is much higher than the general average”. When the size of a platform or the internet as a whole is growing rapidly and the number of businesses taking over users is still small, the cost of access is extremely low and the return is very high. Underline business understands: you own a store, you own the whole street, and people on the street come into your store, which is a bonus. And then you opened 10 shops, and the flow of people didn't change, and your business was split up, and you started discounting and handing out flyers to get the guests back — the cost was getting higher and the flow was not falling. The dividend disappears。
Three landmark nodes:
Elevator penetration peaked in 2023 (27. 6 per cent later)
In 2025, the internet giant strategy shifted to “reducing efficiency gains” “user value tilling”
In february 2026, mobile internet users in china grew at a rate of 1. 5 per cent per month
Four causes of irreversibility:
The size of the user peaks
Fee-take-off costs surged (same budget, interactive costs increased by almost 30 per cent)
Platform pattern solidified (the top three apps account for more than 80% of traffic)
Structural saturation of the user's attention (content supply explosion with a constant decrease in the probability of each being seen)
Conclusion: the era of “buying traffic” as a one-off business ended。
4. 3 how can a brand without visibility be achieved
The answer to this question lies precisely in the backside of the “flow dividend” — just as the widely publicized pattern of flows is not working, and the unrenowned brands are being pushed out of the way to a more solid path: a narrow and deep rhetorical model。
The first step was to “pre-economies” where users gathered. Many successful dtc brands began to publish professional content in communities where targeted users gather (small red books, knowledge, shivering comment areas, vertical forums), not to sell, but to answer questions, share knowledge and build trust. By the time the product comes out, there's already a group of people who trust your professionalism。
In the second step, the product itself brings its own “discussable” genes. For the fourth consecutive year, the ubras series of “small cool winds” has been upgraded with clear experience for each generation, and users naturally compare, discuss and recommend. It's not an advertisement. It's a product design。
In the third step, a trust hub was found to drive the first users. It's not necessarily a star — it can be a business koc, a vertical opinion leader, even a trusted friend around you. Their recommendation is your first trust building block。
"does it have a reputation or a reputation?" the key to this cycle of death is that you don't need everyone to know about you, you just need to make a few people fall in love with you. That is why i have been emphasizing “to serve the first core users first” — not as the end, but as the starting point。
V. How do we market today's brand? Let's start with these four things
5. 1 redefining your products: from “sale” to “sell solutions”
Do not sell electric drills, sell holes in walls; sell “a good and no bad wall” when others also sell holes. Don't sell courses, sell the results of “learning people”; sell the results “more easily” when others sell them. Consumers never buy products, but they help them solve problems。
What do you sell when everyone sells solutions? Selling “the cost of not knowing the user himself” — for example, buying a smoker, which the user thought was sucking, was actually asking for “no taste in the food, no greasy in the kitchen after five years”. Whoever can fix these hidden costs wins。
5. 2 find your 1,000 iron fans: critical thinking
Kevin kelly introduced the theory of 1,000 iron fans in 2008: the so-called iron fans are those who are “unquestionably willing to buy and recommend your products”. Assuming $100 per person per year for you, a thousand fans would generate $100,000 in revenue. Of course, 1000 is just a fissure — it's not a magic number, it's a thinking direction: instead of chasing the empty million-dollar flow, ask myself: can i serve 1,000, or even 100, 10 people who really recognize me
The real value of these 1,000 bar fans is that they are a critical point. When you have 1,000 core users who are willing to buy and actively communicate on a continuous basis, they will become your network of free slogans — 10 ordinary customers per person, 10,000 faithful users. The brand has since entered a positive cycle of self-growth, and there is no longer a need for daily anxiety to “take the flow”. For most small and medium-sized enterprises, instead of chasing 1 million traffic that never comes back once, it would be better to serve 1,000 people who are willing to go with you。
5. 3 adjustment of the marketing budget: from “pull-buying flow” to “content + flow” mix
Content and flow are not opposing, but multiplication: good content x precise flow = growth. The mere purchase of the traffic is a “rent house”, the money stops; the content is a “building house” and good content continues to have long-term effects. The right approach is to allocate a portion of the budget to the production of high-value content (assessment, curriculum, real experience) and to use another part of the budget to accurately channel the content to accelerate cold start-up. This is not about not buying traffic, but about using content to increase the return on each traffic fee。
A test: if you stop throwing, your business falls off the cliff, and you are essentially renting customers. If you stop the flow and are supported by natural searches, citations, repurchases of old people, you really have “client assets”。
5. 4 establish feedback loops to engage users in product overlaps subaru
Mi's early success was largely due to the miui forum. Hundreds of thousands of fever friends make weekly recommendations, and the mi team responds quickly and updates weekly. These users are not only consumers, but also “co-builders”, how can they not help mi
Bottom logic: when users are involved in the improvement of your product, he moves from being a bystander to being a “one of his own”. Our own people do not say that their home is bad or leave easily. This is the most advanced customer relationship — turning clients into partners。
Conclusion: marketing makes sales redundant
Back to the question at the beginning: is marketing "sell things out"
Selling it is the object of sale, not the essence of marketing. The essence of marketing is to solve the problems of others with valuable products and services, building trust and identity in the process and ultimately making sales logical。
As managementist peter drook said, "marketing is intended to make it redundant."
People who really know marketing never chase their customers. What they do is they get clients to come and they don't want to leave。
Today's money depends on marketing capacity; tomorrow's money depends on marketing capacity. Both are important, but the order must not be confused — without marketing to the bottom, sales are passive water。
