Marketing: Everybody who made it through high school has heard the term a thousand times, but sometimes its true meaning gets lost. We use the word so often in business that it can serve as a catchall for just about every one of our processes. And while that’s true, there are better ways to look at it. Simply put, if it gets your brand out into the public eye, it’s marketing. Whether it’s a billboard, a radio ad, a video, or a newsletter, marketing comes in many different forms, all of them with the express goal of getting your brand in front of potential customers. It’s very important that we grasp the concept of marketing if we hope to ever master it.

There are any number of ways to begin. The longer you spend in the business world, the better you will comprehend it through simple trial and error. It takes time: people don’t spend years studying it at universities for nothing. And it requires experience: you won’t know what works until you’ve tried and failed and made adjustments. Practical ways to get a hold on how you can use marketing to your advantage include knowing your customer’s interests, doing market research, and studying the data you harvest from these things.

Marketing is relevant to — and should inform — every aspect of your business, from distribution to advertising. Marketing includes every facet of the brand you build, making it unique to your company and appealing to your customer, all while leveraging social media, video marketing, and print marketing to forge a methodology that works best for your brand. That being said, it’s only hard if you make it hard. As long as you’re releasing a steady stream of quality content on a wide variety of platforms, you will glean enough feedback to be able to adjust, tailoring a perfect fit for all your campaigns.