Synth And Music : End of the Night : Afterglow (Synth Work) All Done By Obu Pianist and AQVAREC
Yesterday, I picked up a book titled “101 Psychological Tactics in Modern Advertising” (published by Direct Publishing) and skimmed through it. Through this book, along with various business cases I’ve come across so far, I gained a simple yet fundamental insight : The success of any business ultimately depends on how effectively and appropriately one can allocate limited resources—people, time, and money—to the right areas.
In particular, I came to strongly believe that two essential elements for business growth are “advertising budget” and “human connections.” No matter how high the quality of the food a restaurant serves, if no one knows it exists, it’s as good as nonexistent. People cannot choose something they are not aware of. That’s why advertising and personal networks are what play the crucial role of spreading awareness.
In this sense, advertising budget and human connections are complementary resources. If you have enough budget, you can gain exposure. On the other hand, even without a budget, if you have strong connections with influential people in a certain field, they can help spread your product or service through their network. I’ve come to feel that the “amount” of advertising budget and the “quality” of human connections are closely interrelated.
However, if you lack both—if you have no money to spend on advertising and no trusted network—then the business won’t even get off the ground. Because you simply have nothing to allocate to gaining visibility.
For example, I’ve uploaded about 100 self-produced beats on Spotify. This is what you’d call an “organic” approach. One of those tracks happened to be picked up in a foreign country and was played around 3,500 times. But that was a completely unpredictable outcome. Organic buzz is highly volatile and lacks reproducibility, making it far too risky to serve as a foundation for business.
If you do choose an organic strategy, your only real option is to keep producing content in large volumes. But that, too, requires another kind of cost—enormous time and effort. In the end, no matter what strategy you take, you can never escape the fundamental principle of resource allocation.
I write this down as a reminder to myself : A business without an advertising budget and without high-quality human connections cannot be called a business. Because without the ability to allocate any resources toward gaining recognition, there’s simply no foundation to build on.