I think the best insight I've ever come across about marketing was in The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. He had a strategy of building marketing campaigns before he built products.
He would go as far as to develop the website and marketing assets, all the way up to and including an order form, spending money on advertising, etc. and see how it performed. And when people hit the order button they'd just get a message which said "currently out of stock - check back soon."
If the numbers coming back from a marketing campaign were good he'd then go on to develop the product.
Now you could debate the ethics of this but the key point is that the best way to figure out the sales and marketing side of a business is trial, error, and measurement of the outcomes. You get a marketing message of some kind out there, and you see if where and how you did it is a winner. You get your message/funnel/whatever as close as possible to an actual sales process. You get as close as you can to measuring specifically buying intent. You defer as much investment in actual product development as you can. Your time and money instead goes into looking for a technique and message that work.
Eventually you get enough info about your market this way that marketing looks much much less opaque. You will come to understand who would buy your shit and why. If you are a creator/maker/artist/developer/etc. and you achieve that understanding you've basically written yourself a golden ticket for many many years at that point, because for you, making the thing which fulfills that demand is really the easy part.
It's understanding what the demand is and who has it that needs your time and attention at the start. Understanding the shape of the hole in the universe which you are going to fill. Once you achieve that everything else falls into place.
He would go as far as to develop the website and marketing assets, all the way up to and including an order form, spending money on advertising, etc. and see how it performed. And when people hit the order button they'd just get a message which said "currently out of stock - check back soon."
If the numbers coming back from a marketing campaign were good he'd then go on to develop the product.
Now you could debate the ethics of this but the key point is that the best way to figure out the sales and marketing side of a business is trial, error, and measurement of the outcomes. You get a marketing message of some kind out there, and you see if where and how you did it is a winner. You get your message/funnel/whatever as close as possible to an actual sales process. You get as close as you can to measuring specifically buying intent. You defer as much investment in actual product development as you can. Your time and money instead goes into looking for a technique and message that work.
Eventually you get enough info about your market this way that marketing looks much much less opaque. You will come to understand who would buy your shit and why. If you are a creator/maker/artist/developer/etc. and you achieve that understanding you've basically written yourself a golden ticket for many many years at that point, because for you, making the thing which fulfills that demand is really the easy part.
It's understanding what the demand is and who has it that needs your time and attention at the start. Understanding the shape of the hole in the universe which you are going to fill. Once you achieve that everything else falls into place.