Establish a Problem Then Position Yourself as the Solution

Defining a problem and having everyone or at least your target market see you as the solution is one of the ultimate goals of marketing.  When you mention marketing to most people they tend to classify marketing as sales or advertising.  Sales and advertising are a part of marketing, however, marketing is a much, much larger.

Create a product and then decide how to market and advertise that product.   Well, this is the standard approach that many companies choose when trying to bring something to market.  Unfortunately, most products brought to market during the year fail.

The failure rate for new product launch ranges from an estimated 50% and 75% (PRLEAP.COM) 

I hypothesize that this high failure rate can be contributed to marketing.  Marketing should be the very first step in the product development process.  Before you spend $1000s or even $1,000,000s of dollars developing a product and then advertising it and creating partnerships and distribution deals only to see it sell about 100 units; why not do some market research and determine if it is a product that is NEEDED by the consumer.  When opening up a new pizza restaurant or fast food chain, research the location and decide if that particular market can handle another restaurant such as yours.  Are there already too many of them in the area, do the demographics of the people living there actually like that type food?  These are all questions that marketing helps us to answer.

Remember:  The best marketing strategy there is, is  to establish a problem and then to position yourself to your target market as the solution to that problem.