If you're a small business owner, this blog is for you.
We all have a basic understanding of what marketing is, but do we truly understand why marketing is so important for our businesses? Before we get into why marketing is important for your business, it’s good to understand what marketing is and how consumers take in marketing.
WHAT IS MARKETING?
Simply put, marketing is the activities that a business does to encourage the purchasing decisions of its target market. To determine the best marketing practices, experts evaluate the four marketing Ps to get the most from the marketing strategy:
· Product
· Price
· Placement
· Promotion
THE LIFELINE OF A SMALL BUSINESS
Just like accounting, HR, and sales, every big company has a marketing department, but many small businesses lack marketing resources. Why is that? The answer is twofold. Firstly, in a small business every dollar counts, marketing can seem like wasted money when you don’t see instant results. Secondly, a lot of business owners think that they can handle marketing themselves.
Both assumptions can be dangerous for the health of a business. Unless the business owner has extensive marketing experience, time, and dedication, their marketing efforts are sure to fail. Outsourcing marketing for a small business (or bringing it in-house) is critical for the business's lifeline. But before that happens, a business owner needs to understand that marketing is a long-term investment that will provide results over a period AND that effective marketing truly takes a marketing professional.
Nothing proves more detrimental to a company than wasting money on marketing efforts that have no strategy behind them. Additionally, here-and-there marketing with a lack of consistency just wastes the time of the business owner and loses the trust of the consumer.
SIMPLY PUT, MARKETING HELPS YOU SELL YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE
THE MARKETING FUNNEL
Here is some hard truth for you as a small business owner: people aren’t going to instantly buy from you. It has nothing to do with you or your product, it has everything to do with how consumers digest information.
Consumers digest sales information in three main steps: awareness, consideration, and then conversion. Basically, a consumer is made aware of a product or service through marketing, considers purchasing the product through additional marketing, and then buys the product with even more marketing.
The marketing funnel explains why doing one-off marketing does not work. Consumers need to be unknowingly pushed through the funnel to get an actual customer. For some businesses this can take a week, for others it can take months. Knowing how to push your target audience through the funnel is why hiring a marketing expert is critical. If you’re consistently targeting the right audience with the right message, then your marketing efforts will work.
THE 5 REASONS WHY MARKETING IS IMPORTANT FOR A SMALL BUSINESS
Through fully understanding what marketing is and how consumers digest marketing, let’s jump into the five reasons why marketing is important (according to STAK Marketing).
1. Pushes people through the marketing funnel
2. Builds consumer trust
3. Brand awareness
4. Helps you track consumer data
5. Keeps you relevant against competitors
Marketing is the heartbeat of a business. Without marketing or with the wrong marketing, a business can truly suffer. The good news is that you don’t need a huge budget to start implementing marketing. Your efforts can start small and strategically and as you grow, so can your marketing budget.
STAK Marketing is a full-service marketing agency in Utah that specializes in pinpointing the right marketing strategies for small businesses. We’d love to talk to you about your business and how we can help implement smart strategies tailored to your goals.
Keep STAKing,
Michelle Johnson
Owner/Founder STAK Marketing
Michelle Johnson is the owner, founder, and Chief Marketing Guru at STAK Marketing. Our passion at STAK Marketing is to create beautiful STAKs of marketing strategies that help small businesses grow and reach their goals. STAK Marketing's expertise ranges from SEO to branding, e-mail marketing to website design, PR to advertising, and much more - making STAK Marketing a one-stop-shop for all your small business marketing needs.