“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.” Milan Kundera
As a business owner or aspiring business owner, there’s a good chance you come in contact with marketing-related content every day. More people, especially entrepreneurs like you, are realizing the importance of marketing and grabbing the bulls by the horn.
The reason is that marketing helps businesses in various ways. With in-depth knowledge of marketing, you’d be able to cut costs, determine the trajectory of your products, create strategies that target your customers, etc.
Facebook says we only spend 1.7 seconds looking at a magazine ad, 1.5 seconds looking at a poster, and 1 second looking at a digital banner ad. With this short attention span, do you think your product can market itself? I bet not. But with marketing, consumers will tilt in the direction of irrationality.
For example, while Aquafina table water and Bigi table water are identical, people would rather spend more on Aquafina than on Bigi.
This is because people have come to build associations with these brands. It could be the experiences during the different stages before purchasing the product. It could also be through who they see using the brand.
Give people brandless table water and they will tell you it tastes the same. The moment you brand it, their preferences change. Do you know why? Because they have formed opinions from their experience with the brand and what the brand stands for.
ALSO SEE: CAN A GOOD PRODUCT MARKET ITSELF
As a growing business, marketing has a favorable impact on your company’s bottom line.
Deciding not to keep spending money on marketing, could mean sowing the seeds of that business’s demise. The negative impact of this may not be immediate or obvious but it will tell eventually. So the future success of a business is dependent on marketing.
Make a commitment to spend on marketing each month whether your business is booming or your phone is silent.
So if you need to persuade someone, whether it’s a member of your team, your boss, your business partner, or yourself to start investing in marketing, here are five reasons you may use.
- Marketing Increases Brand Awareness
More people especially those outside your network will get to know about your brand. It’s futile to pump money into a company you do not have plans to promote.
Making yourself visible is one approach to making an impact and developing the framing effect if you want to grow big.
Invest in marketing to target the “right” audience and get them to know about the values they stand to gain once they come across your product or service.
- Marketing can facilitate the development of an emotional bond with your audience.
Marketing creates culture, status, affiliation, and people like us. Businesses have a lot better chance of their clients (or community) remembering the brand, and mentioning it to others. Consumers develop loyalty to a brand if they can emotionally connect with its product and services.
Ever heard of storytelling in marketing?
- Consumers can choose you above your competition with the help of marketing.
The more people get to see and understand a brand’s message, the easier it will be to make better-informed decisions. What makes you unique? Why should they pick you over your competitors? These important messages can be clearly communicated with the use of marketing.
- Marketing helps in boosting sales.
There is no small business that doesn’t want to increase sales. Market your products and services and watch how the sales will rise. Reach a larger audience and automatically increase sales.
- Marketing is interesting.
You get to connect the dots and become more creative. Who wouldn’t want to spend time coming up with concepts that bring in paying clients? When you see a marketing campaign succeed, when your ad campaigns successfully convert into online sales, you get an adrenaline rush.
Imagine creating campaigns or coming up with innovative ideas, sharing them with the public, and seeing different positive (even the negative ones spark something at least) reactions from consumers resonating with your brand.
The feeling is almost as elating as seeing your name on a Coca-cola bottle during the share a coke campaign. What were the odds of that happening?
You can send us a message to help you strengthen your marketing efforts. We would love to be a part of your brand story!
