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Think about when you are going to buy someone a present for their birthday. Let us say you do not know anything at all about this person. You know them through a friend and that is about it, but you still need to get a present.
You have two paths you can take. The first is that you question people about what the person wants, even going to them directly and asking them if they have any suggestions. The second is that you just get what you think they might want and leave it at that. You might get a gift card to a store they might shop at, or might not, and take the chance of them not caring at all about your gift.
This is exactly the same with marketing, except if you give people something they do not like, you will not get any sales from them, and your business would not last for very long. This makes research one of the most important aspects of marketing.
And if you think about it, do you really like getting a present that you have no interest in, and you know the person who gave it to you did not care at all about whether or not you would like it? This does not make anyone feel good or put a lot of interest into the person
who gave them the gift.
Maybe postcard printing is the best type of marketing to use to reach your customers, or maybe posters are going to be better at reaching them. You cannot know until you do the research to find out.
And once you know what type of advertising to use you still need to know what images to put on it, what kinds of sales will appeal to them the most, and so on. There are so many different details about marketing that cannot be understood without researching your customers to find out what their needs are.
Why waste money on posters when postcard printing was the way to go, and you did not know it because you did not do any research? Now you have a marketing push that would not be successful, and might very well drive people away from your company rather than bring them in.
Research is rarely particularly fun and often takes a large time and financial investment, which is why companies often avoid it if they can. Sometimes they will get lucky too, just like sometimes that random gift you picked will actually work, but do you really want to leave your marketing up to chance?
I would prefer to have a little more assurance than that if I am going to spend that kind of money on my marketing. I should hope you would want the same assurance too.