If you run your own business, you know how important it is to connect with customers and let them know you exist. After all, you could have the best product in the whole world at amazing value, but who will buy it if they don’t know about it?
This, in essence, is why marketing is so vital for all businesses.
Marketing is the heartbeat of your organization, allowing you to show the world who you are and what you do. It not only shows what you have to sell or what service you provide but also what your brand ethos is all about. This is particularly important in the modern business world, where how you do something is as carefully considered by consumers as what you do.
Is marketing really all that though?
Of course, the original question and one that many business owners still ask is whether marketing is that important compared to all the other things that go on. In the grand scheme of things for your business, how important is it really?
The simple answer is that it is hugely important and certainly one of the main areas in your company to focus on. Without a robust and sound marketing plan in place, all the other elements within your business will not function. We all know customer service is vital, but you first need marketing to bring the customers in order to serve them. Similarly, looking after invoices and credit control is essential, but you first need the business that marketing provides to do all that.
There is no doubt that there are many areas within any business that are crucial, but marketing really does come first and has a massive role to play in any organization’s success.
How can marketing help drive your business forward?
If you need any extra motivation to give marketing the attention it deserves, here are some ways in which it will help any business succeed:
- Allows better customer connection – one area in which marketing really helps is in identifying your target audience and helping you improve the services you market to them. The data that is collected on consumers through marketing efforts is as valuable as gold dust, and tells you what they are looking for from you and what you need to do to give it to them. When you factor in that it also allows you to connect with customers and encourage repeat business, then it is clear just how vital it is.
- Refines your brand message – marketing is as much about finding out what presses your target audience’s buttons as much as it is selling to them. Through sound marketing, you can find out if what you are doing and how you are doing it is really working, or what you need to change. You may think your latest product name or design is amazing, but you will never know if your customers think that, without using marketing to find out.
- Helps create a stronger brand – as well as helping to refine what you are saying, marketing is super important for creating a strong brand to begin with. Marketing campaigns will allow you to build a brand that consumers can identify with and remember. This is naturally good for business, as they will come straight to you the next time they need something you offer.
- Marketing builds trust – another reason marketing is so important for your business is that it builds trust with the consumer over time. The reason this is so vital is that people are much more likely to spend money with a company they trust. By running honest, open and consistent marketing campaigns, you will be well on the way to gaining consumer trust for the future.
- It makes you visible – as noted earlier, marketing is essential to help tell people you exist and what you offer. Without any marketing efforts, people will have a hard time finding you, won’t know what you do or simply won’t know to look for you at all! You need to make the effort to reach out to the public and give them the information they need to deal with you.
It is not just this article that you can look to for marketing’s importance, though. Respected business professional Stan Gershengoren has some great articles on his Stan Gershengoren Medium account, which give more information on the best marketing practices to follow.
Marketing is critical to business success
If you are in charge of your own business, marketing needs to be a major part of your business plan. It is the foundation of your whole organization and the one activity that will allow you to do everything else. Take the time to create a solid marketing plan to let the world know what you do and you will not regret it.
