Marketing often comes with many interpretations even from those that have received degrees on the subject. Entrepreneurs may think marketing is sales, a recently graduated marketing major will often tie marketing to buying advertising and because few people truly understand what marketing is, the entrepreneur will often be extremely frustrated with this critical piece to the business.
Marketing is often best done by the entrepreneur, as he knows his product best. He is also driven to maximize value when deciding on marketing strategies, unlike many recently graduated marketing majors who tend to focus on buying advertising.
Marketing starts when you first come up with the idea for your product, and continues write up to and including selling your business. Everything you are doing is creating strategy for your company and that is really a general idea of what marketing really is.
When you raise capital, you come up with a strategy to secure investors. When you design your product, you do research to find out what your potential customers want and need. The act if compiling and packaging that information is part of your marketing strategy.
When you build your delivery and customer service system you are thinking about how best to connect with your customer. Again, that is all part of the marketing process.
Placing a strong focus on a marketing plan will help your business tremendously, and will give you a definitive road map, along with a testing plan to find out what works and what doesn't. It literally can be the difference between success and failure.
You might think you aren't any good at marketing, and that's OK and all the more reason to put more emphasis on developing a marketing strategy right from the start. The more you learn, the better you will become at marketing and building your business.
Whatever you do, if you plan to hire someone to handle marketing, make sure that they learn all they can about your product and do more than just buy advertising. You are capable of buying all the advertising you need without paying someone else to do it