When we talk about business, there are concrete terms like “sales” and “profit” that everyone understands. You sell your product to your customer, your customer pays you and you make a profit. That is how every business survives.

But how does a customer know you sell a certain product? How do you compete against other companies who sell the same or similar products? How do you getyour customer to buy what you’re selling?

The answers to those (and other) questions come from another fundamental business practice: Marketing. Sales and profit are what make a business survive; marketing is what makes a business succeed.

So what exactly is marketing? If you Google it, you will likely find reference to E. Jerome McCarthy’s 4 P’s of Marketing: Product, Place, Promotion and Price.

Simply put, product is the service you offer your customer. Place refers to distributionhow you make your product available to your customer. Promotion is how you communicate with your customer, through methods such as advertising, sales or public relations. And price is what we’re all concerned about: how much you charge for your product, which directly relates to how you value your service and your company.

Those are the basics of marketing. How those 4 P’s relate to you and your business is much more complicated, particularly for people who are just starting out.

Being successful isn’t just about having a good product, or offering a great service. You need to find out who will want to buy that product or service and then you need to go after them. Without marketing, you can’t sell. And if you don’t sell, you can’t get to the good stuff – profit.