# Marketing starts when the product does
Understanding · principle · https://build-here.africa/book/chapters/04-09-marketing-is-not-decoration.html

## The reflex

The team has designed a service. When it comes to presenting it, they are still working out who it is for, which alternative it replaces, and what they can promise.

## The builder's reflex

Bring the questions of recipient, alternative and promise into the design, from the start.

## Why

Marketing does not start when the product is finished. It answers the questions that decide the product: for whom, instead of what, and why choose it. The words, the design and the channels then make that answer visible.

"Retailers" is too wide a group to decide anything. "The person reconciling stock and sales at closing time" is a situation you can go and see. The more precise the description, the easier the choices: which needs to handle, which to leave, which evidence to show.

If the marketing team meets the product at the end, what they know arrives too late. One conversation on a decisive question, at the start, is often enough.

With no commercial activity, the same questions help you present a training, a resource or an internal service.

## Try this

Answer four questions briefly:

> For whom, and in what situation?
> Instead of what, today?
> What useful change, with what limits?
> Why try now, or why wait?

Compare your answers with a colleague's, or with someone affected. Pick one assumption to check at the next conversation, and adjust the promise to what you hear.

## To discuss

Which part of our presentation rests on an assumption nobody has checked?