The Importance of Marketing
Let's talk marketing! There are some things that have become very clear to me this past year about your knowledge of business marketing . . . . the importance of marketing, what it does for your business, the expectations of your marketing company, and so on.
Marketing makes up 80% of your business. If you are either not doing your marketing correctly, don't have consistent marketing, or don't even have marketing (every couple of months or a few things a week doesn't count), then you are missing a HUGE opportunity to grow and strengthen your company. This is where a marketing professional comes in. We do SO MUCH work besides posting pretty posts. There is a lot of creativity, analytics, research, gathering media, managing events, etc. the list goes on. This is why marketing is a full-time job and is expensive . . . but honestly, that's the cost of business and should be on the high-priority list.
Without marketing, you don't have a presence. No one knows who you are as a company, what you have to offer, and if you are a trustworthy business.
Just look at what media has done to our economy these last couple of years alone. Media is a powerful tool and as marketers, it's our job to use this tool to help grow your business (if done the right way).
The benefits of social media and other forms of marketing (again . . . if done correctly) include:
Establish Brand Recognition
The primary and most important benefit of marketing is brand recognition. Marketing strategies help to imprint a brand in the minds of customers. This ensures that customers seek a particular brand of a product, rather than the brand seeking out its customers.
Gain and Retain Customers
Once a brand has gained its ground and established its customers, marketing enables it to retain its customers. This is essential so that the brand does not lose ground to products that newly come into the market.
Identify Real Customers
Marketing strategies allow a business to identify potential and actual customers. Instead of trying to force a product or service on unwilling customers, marketing helps to target customers who have the real need.
Provide Information
Marketing a product is the best way to provide information about it. The salient features of a product or service is what is used to market the product. It is this same information that will attract customers to the product. Knowing a brand better ensures that customers will come to trust it better.
Save Time
Marketing, and more so, effective marketing will help reduce the break-even period of a business. By promoting a product or service through effective marketing, a business can promote its sales and reach its intended clientele faster.
Establish Trust
Repeated and effective marketing ensures that a product remains in the minds of its intended customers. This in the long run would help in establishing brand trust, which would make customers choose the product irrespective of competition. Trust is created over a long period of time and marketing is an effective way in establishing it.
Let me just repeat this one more time . . . trust is created over a LONG PERIOD OF TIME and MARKETING is an effective way of establishing it.
It takes marketing 13 to 16 months of consecutive marketing before you are going to see effective results. 13 TO 16 MONTHS . . . keep this in mind.
Encourages Referrals
Marketing encourages new customers to seek information about the brand. By making a product seen and heard frequently, a business also increases the chances of word-of-mouth referrals. The chances of suggesting an often-seen product is higher when compared to something that you do not see frequently or are unaware of.
Address Issues
The various means of marketing a product can also act as a means of clearing inhibitions or misunderstandings about the quality or nature of a product or service. Often, marketing can become an effective tool in clarifying misapprehensions relating to a brand.
Everyone wants short-term results from their marketing these days and that is just not the reality. Good, professional marketing with organic growth is how you establish long-term growth. This takes time, patience, and most importantly respect for your marketing team.