Why is Marketing Important?

 

Marketing

We all know that marketing advertises businesses.  We are inundated with marketing every single day so this seems a bizarre question to ask, right?

Most start-ups and small businesses do not budget for marketing.  With all their other expenses it does not seem as important, or you can be forgiven for thinking it can be done in-house. I mean how difficult can it be?

Consider someone with a trade, a carpenter, or chef, or hairdresser, as examples. They have been trained in their industry, but did these apprenticeships provide marketing skills?  They may have touched on it, but were they given in-depth knowledge?

Then these tradespeople, rightly decide to set up their own business because there are certain skills they would like to provide to give their clients the best service.

How does anyone know the amazing skills being provided for if they are not told about it?

That is where marketing comes in.

Target audience

It tells the target audience who you are, what you do, and most importantly how it benefits them.  This is extremely important for business success, without anyone knowing who a business is, how can they succeed?

Marketing is a very considered approach to storytelling your brand and product. Various elements are included when researching for marketing purposes, these include:

• Who the business is

• The way the business engages with clients and the target audience

• What the products being sold are

• How the products benefit the target audience

• Who the target audience is 

• How the target audience will receive the message

• Understanding the industry

• Understanding the competitors and what they are doing

After the research is carried out then a plan to tell your story is created. This storytelling is called branding and refers to everything people see about your business, so consistency is key.

Storytelling and branding allow your customers to connect with your business, understand who you are and where you are going.

Community

If you think of your buying habits, particularly during Covid19 lockdowns, which businesses did you buy more from? Sure a lot of people bought from small businesses, but why did they choose the ones they did? Great products, great service, and trust were built. The flow-on effect was a network was build around these businesses, so any changes they made to assist their target audience were noticed.  It is a relationship, a case of listening to your target audience and responding and providing products and services above their expectation.

It is vital that your amazing skills get noticed, otherwise, you are working away with no one knowing what you do or how you do it. Add things like lockdowns, and people then do not know how you adjust to situations.  All marketing allows you to be seen by your target audience, you build the community through trust and you build your client base.