13 Reasons Why Marketing Is Crucial to Your Businesses Success
Marketing is the action of promoting and selling products or services, including research and advertising.
The Small Business Association (SBA) recommends that companies doing $5 million a year in sales spend between 7 and 8 percent of their gross revenue on marketing and advertising. Why? In this day and age, there’s simply no substitute for modern marketing, from launching a full-scale affiliate marketing program to expertly optimizing your website. If you’re trying to convince your boss (or yourself) why you should spend a little cash on marketing, simply present the list below!
- It Helps You Generate Leads – Since lead generation is often rated as one of the biggest challenges among marketers, it’s also the No. 1 reason why most companies funnel money into their marketing program. A well-crafted strategy can help grow your lead base exponentially in a relatively short amount of time, both through digital and traditional avenues.
- It Helps You Educate Your Consumers – Producing your own blogs, articles, and infographics not only helps you spread the word to your core consumer—content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search advertising, in fact—but also provides you with an opportunity to expound on your brand through tutorials, reviews, buyer’s guides, and more.
- It Helps You Scale Your Business – In order to scale your business, you need resources, both human and financial. A profitable marketing strategy will help ensure that you have the proper support to keep growing and growing. More sales plus more leads equal more resources, of course.
- It Helps You Legitimize Your Business – From comprehensive digital referrals and influencer programs to classic paid ads, marketing signals to the consumer that you’re a legitimate operation, and one that’s safe to do business with. You can make your company feel well-established through content on your website, as well as through well-written social media posts.
- It Helps You Attract the Right Customers – What sets digital marketing apart from traditional marketing and advertising? It has to do with playing to your target audience. In the old days, companies were forced to cast a wide net—say, through a commercial or a print ad—that would attract people of many demographics. Now, with highly targeted ads, marketing can help you attract precise, high-value customers based on specific criteria.
- It Helps You Build Your Brand’s Persona – Thanks to social media and content marketing, it’s easier than ever to build up a complex, multifaceted brand voice and persona. And, as you probably already know, that’s something that consumers really want—86 percent of people say they want to interact with authentic, honest brands. So it’s well worth your while to give your company a face, a voice, and a personality, and to make it likable while you’re at it!
- It Helps You Attract the Right Partners – In business, you’re only as good as your weakest partner. Whether to co-promote, team up on a new development, or exchange detailed referrals, having a solid marketing plan will help you attract those next-level partners which can help you grow your company fast.
- It Helps You Promote New Products and Services – Digital marketing is a whole lot more agile and on-demand than its traditional predecessor, which means it’s always there for you when you want to launch a new product, make a big announcement, or introduce a new service. E-mail marketing and social media are particularly ideal for these tasks.
- It Helps You Hire More Passionate Players – At the end of the day, a good marketing campaign lays the foundation for building up a strong business with enthusiastic team members. You’ll be able to funnel the money you’ve made from your marketing efforts into human resources and add more crucial team members. You may even be able to hire an in-house marketing professional!
- It Makes You Easy to Find – With the help of search engine optimization (SEO) and social media, marketing plays a massive role in your findability. Being easy to find is pretty clutch in this day and age, especially if you’ve got a ton of competitors. Being easily searchable can also lead to exposure from bloggers, publishers, and companies looking for valuable partnerships.
- It Helps Attract Top Talent – As previously mentioned, a well-rounded marketing campaign can do wonders for legitimizing your company and making it feel trustworthy. If you’re looking for some fantastic ways to build your brand persona so it’s more appealing to top talent, spend some of your marketing resources on crafting a polished strategy and a strong brand persona.
- It Helps You Push Your Budget Further – With so many proven marketing tactics from which to choose, you can market in a way that suits your specific budget, no matter what that may be. You may also adopt marketing tools that follow the performance-based payment model (such as pay-per-click advertising or affiliate marketing) to ensure that you get a positive return on investment.
- It Helps You Track Your Success – Last, marketing is a great way to help you set and measure important key performance indicators (KPIs) and to measure them with every new implementation or dollar spent. Using tools that provide you with built-in analytics, such as social media ads and useful tracking software, will help you keep a close eye on your progress so you can adjust accordingly.
There’s simply no denying it—marketing is a big deal and something that you should be spending a fair chunk of your budget on. Usually, marketing is worth the investment, as long as you spend the time to determine exactly where and how to funnel your promotional dollars.