Companies are like stools: they need at least three legs to stand.
If you are a nautical entrepreneur, can you name them?
Before you answer (or read the answers if you can’t imagine them), here are two hints.
The first: it doesn’t count to say, “My sector is different.” No, even if you sell boats, you’re still selling to humans who behave like humans—whether they’re buying toothpaste or a boat.
Remember what neuroscientist Antonio Damasio said: “We are not thinking machines that feel; we are feeling machines that think.”
Second hint: one of the three legs is NOT the product the company sells.
If you still have no idea what the three pillars of a successful business are, here are the answers:
The first leg is people; the second is processes; the third (and let’s skip any risqué jokes about the third leg) is marketing.
We could spend a lot of time reasoning behind each of these points, but I want to focus on the third, which is what we at LLiquida specialize in.
Marketing is the tool designed to make you attractive to the market.
It’s powerful and, unlike (bad) advertising, it doesn’t make you feel miserable about what you lack so you’ll desire what I’m trying to sell you.
No, marketing is what allows me to give you what you’re looking for.
Marketing is the science that guides business decisions—not the tool that scrambles to balance the books by selling what we’ve decided to produce, regardless of what’s happening in the world.
How many entrepreneurs, not just in the nautical sector, act independently of what’s happening around them?
They behave like children, covering their eyes so the big, bad world doesn’t exist anymore, allowing them to bask in their ideas.
At least until plummeting sales force them to face reality.
Confusing marketing with advertising, communication, live events, or product brochures is like thinking a boat is just the hull, the engine, the rudder, or the helm.
Both marketing and a boat are the sum of these parts, shaped and designed with a purpose.
If I design a catamaran, its hulls will differ from those of a monohull. The rudder of a motorboat with a shaft drive is different from that of a dinghy like a Laser.
The same goes for communication, advertising, live events… they will be different and tailored to business objectives, the customers you have, and the moment we’re living in.
They will vary based on the marketing choices you’ve made.
If you don’t consider all this, at best, you’ll scrape by due to sheer “luck,” or more likely, you’ll take a hit—right to the face.
So, if you’re already asking yourself some deeper questions, your company’s chances of success increase.
And if you’d like to discuss this more thoroughly with an outsider’s perspective—which always helps provide a more detached and broader view—just send a private message or email us at info@lliquida.com.
