For your small business to succeed in a competitive industry, place a lot of business budget towards marketing.
According to marketing experts, you should use 5-15% of your overall revenue for a marketing budget.
If you’re a small business owner, you need to understand the value of marketing. The more you learn about marketing, the more you’ll understand why you need to budget so much for it.
Continue our guide to small business marketing for eleven reasons why marketing is essential for small businesses to succeed.
1. Informs People About Your Business
With a fantastic product or service, you may think your firm can easily stand apart from your competitors and get to consumers.
Contrary to popular belief, this is not the case!
A total of 30 million small companies operate across the country. Companies, even exceptional ones, can suffer because of this lack of attention.
For small firms, marketing is essential since it enables the public to become aware of a company’s existence. You can place your small business on the map using your marketing efforts.
Also, you don’t necessarily have to pay to market your business on search engines. Many consumers find new products on search engines, but the organic results are often more appealing than the paid ones.
Organic search provides 5.66% more opportunity than paid search.
Source: Prosperity Media
Also, once you inform people about your business with marketing, keep the channel of communication open. Find online reviews to see if your customers have further questions about your products or services, and work that into your marketing strategy moving forward.
2. Educates Consumers About Your Offer 🎓
You will likely spend almost all your waking hours experimenting with your company’s products or services. You are intimately familiar with them and fully grasp how they operate.
However, that won’t automatically translate to your customers.
People who could benefit from your products and services may not be aware of them. Marketing can educate your customers about the value of your products and services and convince them to buy from you.
In marketing, you must focus on what your product and service can provide the customer. Rightfully so, consumers’ number one priority when buying a product is finding one that will benefit them.
Specifically, the unique features of your product or service are the ones that will grab consumers’ attention.
Small businesses can benefit significantly from inbound marketing, especially when attracting new customers. Using content, social media, and other platforms to educate consumers about their products and services lets firms reach a wider audience.
For example, social media is an excellent tool to market to consumers, communicate with them, and create a feedback loop for your product or service.
3. Builds Confidence Between Your Company and Your Clients 🤝
You cannot buy loyalty from customers; you must earn it. In business terms, a consumer purchasing a product from you once doesn’t automatically make them a loyal customer.
Customers will more likely be loyal if they fully understand and respect your brand and values.
Small business owners must cultivate a loyal audience for their brand to be as successful as possible. Your customers must return to your firm frequently to purchase your products and services for you to be successful.
Doing this necessitates a level of trust between you and your customers. They must believe you give them the best products or services at the most reasonable costs.
You can build trust between you and your customers through effective marketing. Using marketing strategies, businesses can build customer loyalty and increase sales by establishing a relationship of trust with their customers.
Below are some of the best marketing strategies to build customer trust.
4. Teaches You About Your Business Target Market
Depending on your products or services, you may already know your target market when starting your small business.
However, in some cases, you may discover you misjudged your target audience.
Knowing your audience is essential to create products they love and will buy. Marketing is the key to giving you all the best information about your target market.
Moreover, knowing the exact type of people who love your products can inform future products and marketing. You can group customers by age, income, location, and lifestyle.
An example determining your target market is seeing who responds the most to your marketing efforts and utilizing this information to re-target your products or services.
Customers may provide priceless insight into the quality of your products and services when you use marketing to solicit their opinions. Small firms, in particular, find social media marketing an invaluable resource for soliciting client feedback because they get it quickly and in large volume.
5. Gives a Boost to Your Business Sales 💸
To succeed as a small business owner, you must first focus on making money.
You want to provide your clients with as many goods and services as possible.
If you sell your items or services correctly, you can generate sales. The more people that know about them and understand their value, the more you’ll be able to sell them.
Here is how marketing can help you to boost sales:
- More customers will be aware of your products.
- Marketing your products effectively can generate interest from customers and make them want to buy them.
- You can target specific types of customers you designed the product for.
- Marketing will help customers remember your brand and commit to return purchases.
- Marketing will potentially upsell products to customers; they might buy more than they originally intended.
- Marketing can make customers aware of your website, meaning online shoppers will be more likely to buy from you.
- You can retain customers for future purchases by marketing your loyalty program or newsletter.
- Create seasonal promotions that target a need in a specific season; a coat in winter, for example.
6. Makes Your Business Relevant Every Time
Whether you’re just starting your business or introducing a new product or service, getting people interested in your brand shouldn’t be too challenging. You will generate some buzz as a result of its novelty.
However, your product’s novelty will wear off after a few months if you have an established business. Your small business will no longer be the subject of idle conversation.
Marketing can help you keep your business relevant. Even if you don’t have a new product or service to show your clients, marketing can help you retain a relationship with them.
The type of marketing you choose to use can be the deciding factor on whether your business will remain relevant. For example, visual marketing has a proven track record for reaching marketing goals.
57.1% of people in a 2021 survey said that infographics and illustrations were the most effective method to achieve their marketing goals in 2020.
Source: Venngage
7. Gives Your Business the Chance to Expand
The goal of any company is to see its profits rise. A year from now, you hope your business will be even greater than today, so you need to focus on expansion and growth.
A company’s growth is practically nonexistent without marketing. You must have an excellent marketing strategy to bring in new clients.
You’ll see your business develop over time if you always promote it.
Moreover, you will continue to learn about your customers so that you may build products or services that meet their requirements.
8. Helps You Keep Up with Your Competitors
If you’re in a highly competitive industry, your closest competitors will have an excellent marketing campaign to entice customers.
Therefore, you must ensure that your marketing campaign is:
- High-quality: ensure it speaks directly to your target market and effectively sells your product or service. Focus on the USP that sets it apart from competitors.
- Accessible across multiple channels: cover your entire customer base by creating marketing material for emails, social media, your website, TV, and more.
In 2020, 50% of advertising was online. Offline advertising spend equated to $196 billion, while digital spend reached $378 billion.
Sources: Marketingcharts.com and Statista
As well as focusing on how your products differ from the competition, you must highlight other differences so your customers can identify your business as the one they want to choose.
Other differences to stress can include:
- Your brand–make it clear what your brand values are. Although your competitors may share similar values, they may not advertise them clearly.
- If part of your target audience differs from your top competitors, focus a significant portion of your small business marketing strategy on them.
- Market specific customer benefits, like your newsletter or loyalty program.
9. Opens the Door to Digital Marketing Practices 💻
Digital marketing is a massive part of marketing, with 4% of marketing costs coming from it in 2021.
Digital marketing is popular because of the massive shift to online viewing and shopping. Customers can now find more products and services on websites or social media than if they physically walk into a shop.
The one thing to remember when starting a digital marketing plan is ensuring that you create content for various digital channels.
Digital marketing channels include:
- Marketing on your website: focus on excellent Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to ensure customers can see your content when they search. Create optimized website pages and blog posts.
- Social media posting on popular platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram; tailor the content to the specific platform.
- Marketing videos to send across social media and other digital channels.
- Email marketing for customers who opt to receive marketing emails from you; ensure that the emails go to the main inbox in a customer’s email address, not their spam inbox.
- PPC advertising: a Pay Per Click (PPC) ad involves the customer clicking on an advert you pay to appear at the top of a search engine; you pay the advert publisher for every click.
10. Allows You to Build a Community Surrounding Your Brand
Marketing products will be the main focus of your campaign. However, it also allows you to build your target audience into a community that loves and supports your brand.
For example, if customers buy from you often, you should consider introducing and advertising a loyalty program.
Doing this will make customers more likely to purchase products and become loyal to your business.
You should also create and promote a newsletter to keep customers up to date with your business. Doing this makes them feel like a meaningful part of the company and can increase their loyalty if the material is compelling.
11. Introduces Storytelling into How You Market Products 📚
You cannot expect customers to love your brand and products if you market them plainly. If you essentially say, “Here is the product, and here is what it does.”, it is unlikely that customers will remember it.
However, if you tell a story by taking an experience or problem that the customer can relate to and introducing your product or service to solve that problem, the customer will remember it and want to buy it if it fills a need for them.
Approach storytelling in your marketing from every angle, including the narrative and visual elements of the marketing campaign that make the story and product as memorable as possible.
Final Thoughts on Why Marketing is Essential for a Business
Once you start aggressively marketing your small business, it’s easy to understand the value of marketing. With the correct marketing strategy, you’ll notice the rapid expansion of your company.
Make marketing a priority from the get-go, and don’t stop once you achieve some success in your small business. You’ll have to market your brand as long as your company is open for business.
Also, remember to keep your target market in mind. Don’t make your customer focus too broad because you are less likely to attract customers who will love your products and brand.
If you have more questions on how to market products or services to your target market, find the answers on Tommy.
- 11 Reasons Why Business Owners Love Small Business Marketing
- 1. Informs People About Business
- 2. Educates Consumers About Your Offer
- 3. Builds Confidence Between Your Company And Your Clients
- 4. Teaches You About Your Business Target Market
- 5. Gives A Boost To Your Business Sales
- 6. Makes Your Business Relevant Every Time
- 7. Gives Your Business The Chance To Expand
- 8. Helps You Keep Up With Your Competitors
- 9. Opens The Door To Digital Marketing Practices
- 10. Allows You To Build A Community Surrounding Your Brand
- 11. Introduces Storytelling Into How You Market Products
- Final Thoughts On Why Marketing Is Essential For A Business
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