Be Ready To Fail…
…without marketing, of course. If you think your business can succeed without marketing, think again. Marketing is necessary for every stage of business operations: attracting new consumers, assisting in purchase evaluation, and keeping customers engaged long-term. Marketing is an invaluable asset used to help achieve business objectives. Creating a marketing strategy is the ultimate way to facilitate growth and success in your organization.
Firstly, What is Marketing?
Marketing underpins the success stapled to any business. Marketing is the process of attracting consumers to your brand through persuasive messaging. It represents a company’s attempt to become top of mind for any problem resolution. While marketing is commonly focused on acquiring new customers, a great deal of attention is spent on building engagement and improving customer retention.
Marketing helps to communicate the unique value proposition and points of difference that separate your brand from the competition. There is no point in having a fantastic and innovative product if nobody knows about it. The same can be said for having a great marketing strategy without a good product. The two go hand in hand and correctly illustrate that marketing is like any other cog that goes into making a business function.
There’s a false assumption that marketing is purely promotion. Marketing is a multifaced approach to help achieve business objectives, not just in acquiring new sales. One of the greatest advantages that marketing achieves is relationship-building between you and your customer. Marketing plays a huge role in developing trust and transparency for your customers, enticing stronger customer engagement and potentially greater sales.
Who is Marketing For?
Marketing is for everyone. Any business in any industry can benefit from having a marketing strategy. Whether you’re B2C or B2B, marketing is essential to your long-term success. Marketing encompasses many elements, giving companies the ability to pick and choose which tactic/s best suits their needs, budgets, and target market. While marketing is beneficial to everyone, it’s far from a one-size-fits-all situation. Each target market responds differently to hundreds of different variables. It’s, therefore, vital to understand your marketing environment, your target audience, and how your marketing goals will assist in achieving your business goals.
Why Should I Bother with Marketing?
The reason which everyone should be investing in marketing in today’s world is simple. Everyone is going digital, and your business also needs to go digital to survive. While not all industries rely heavily upon a digital presence to remain competitive, that trend is soon coming to an end.
Without investing in marketing, the personality and image of your company rest entirely in the hands of your sales team. Should you have an underperforming sales representative, a permanent stain upon your business could potentially exist.
1. Marketing Helps Businesses Understand their Audience
Marketing is a great tool to aid companies in obtaining a greater understanding of all their different audiences. Marketing is incomplete without conducting market research prior. Therefore, marketing can help develop a deep psychological understanding of your consumer needs. The use of big-data analysis in marketing has given companies the ability to understand their customers like never before. Heatmapping, engagement statistics, profiling, and other customer metrics paint a comprehensive picture of their target audience and assists in further developing service offerings and future marketing implementations.
2. Marketing Engages Customers in Conversation
Good marketing is a conversation, not a one-way push approach. Social media and other online platforms allow companies to listen to and empathize with their customers actively. Engagement through marketing is incredibly useful in illustrating a brand is tentative towards every consumer need.
Whether or not you directly discuss your products and services, stimulating conversation online helps maintain your organization’s relevancy, brand personality, and consumer trust. By delivering various forms of content online, customers can remain engaged and interested in your business, thus reducing their potential of moving onto competitors.
3. Marketing Builds Brand Loyalty
Marketing helps to develop and strengthen brand loyalty. Studies show that it can be five times more expensive to attract new customers than to retain existing ones.
By developing brand loyalty, you are more likely to remain top of mind for various consumer needs. Brand loyalty isn’t just a cost-effective way of delivering revenue. It plays a large role in the development of brand personality and brand image.
Examples of Marketing Success
Many of the world’s biggest companies have demonstrated how marketing can significantly increase their success. Let’s look at some famous examples:
1. Nike’s Just Do It Campaign
In 1988, Nike’s sales were $800 million. A decade after introducing their ‘Just Do It’ campaign, their sales topped $2 billion. Furthermore, ‘Just Do It’ is still a strong part of its brand value today. Nike demonstrates the value of a concise marketing campaign, developing a credible brand personality, and displaying consistent messaging across all marketing collateral.
Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ campaign doesn’t just represent aesthetic marketing and fashionable clothing items. It represents a comprehensive analysis of a target audience’s emotions, needs, and personality. Nike successfully aligned marketing efforts with customer motivation.
2. Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’
In 2004, Unilever’s research found only 4% of women considered themselves beautiful. Like Nike’s campaign, Dove illustrated a succinct analysis of their target audience, aligned their brand, and created a successful marketing campaign.
The campaign was a huge success, stimulating conversations about beauty standards, while Dove became an emblem of the conversation.
Marketing is essential to the success of any business. Regardless of industry, businesses are almost guaranteed to see growth and success due to tailored marketing strategies. So, don’t wait to fail… make your move today and implement a tailored marketing strategy into your business plan!
If you are interested in developing a marketing strategy for your company, please speak to one of our consultants here.
