Can a business survive without marketing?

My husband is a clever fella.  He doesn’t always know about marketing, isn’t creative but he’s a financial planner and knows about business.  He helps me work through problems and helps me think logically about business strategy. 

So, I had decided to write about the subject “can business survive without marketing” this week and yesterday my husband sent me an article that really resonated with me and touched on this subject. 

During the pandemic I found that whilst some businesses invested in their marketing and looked at new ways to develop, get online and pivot, many cut their marketing budgets and I lost a few clients along the way as I was inevitably cut too. 

However, it is often easier to make cuts in your business and harder to commit to spending and investing.  The article (which you can read here https://fpadvance.com/whats-the-cost/) references a great marketer Seth Godin, who says If you “Loosen the constraints on a system, the system will almost always do better in the short run.”

So, with marketing, yes if you cut marketing budgets if things are tight, or perhaps you’re too busy and don’t have, time things are going to be easier in the short time.  You will free up time or have more money, so your profit and loss will look better.  

However, we have to consider the long-term impact on that.  

For example, if you are really busy with work right now and are thinking perhaps you don’t need to invest the time in marketing because you are busy and don’t need to increase sales, generate leads or get more clients, then what is the future impact on doing that?  A few months down the line, you may become quieter, you need to start pushing sales again and then it is so much harder to get things going again and generate brand awareness, get leads or new clients.  

Marketing is a long game and to re-establish your marketing may take time and may cost more in the long term too.

So, back to my original question, can a business survive without doing marketing?  The answer is yes of course it can, but doing consistent, well executed and strategic marketing makes the difference as to whether a business simply exists or thrives.  And to finish with a great quote “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” (Source: William Bruce Cameron)