As a small business owner, your to-do list is already exhaustive. You’re making connections. You’re building your product. And you’re staying on top of mountains of admin work. It’s exhausting.
Marketing feels like just another thing to do.
But that’s not true! Marketing can have a huge impact on your business in many different ways. So let’s explore why marketing is important for small businesses!
Helps Generates Leads and Sales
Marketing’s ultimate goal is to get people to take an interest in your product and guide them to conversion. Generating awareness all help to bring in customers to your door. Great content delivered at the right time helps to educate customers. giving them all the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions.
Eases Conversion
Marketing strategies give customers the information they need to make decisions.
When a customer becomes aware of a problem, they often seek out information on how to solve it. It might be that they don’t have a dress to wear at a wedding. Or it might be that they want to streamline a business decision.
Your company can use prospecting channels, such as paid ads and viral posts, to generate awareness of a problem. Once they are aware they have a problem, customers enter the research phase. They read up on blog posts about the problem or seek out inspiration on social media. You can create helpful, educational content that helps your prospective customers learn.
After their research stage, customers enter the consideration phase. They narrow down their options and look for validation that they are making the right choice. Case studies and comparison guides are great marketing materials for the consideration stage.
Once the customer has purchased, you have the chance to make them loyal. You can do this by creating aftersales content, such as videos or blogs.. You can send this content through email or social media alongside upsells and discounts.
All these things make a customer’s conversion much easier, as it builds trust at every touch point. Customers need, on average, 7-22 touchpoints with a brand before they consider purchasing. The more marketing material you have throughout the journey, the more touchpoints you have, and the more likely they are to convert. This is true of B2B and B2C sales.
Helps You Stand Out From the Competition
Imagine a supermarket biscuit aisle.
There are hundreds of products from many different brands battling for attention, but which ones capture your eye? Is it the brightly coloured ones? Perhaps it’s the brand name you recognise?
Maybe it’s the one that looks the most premium as your family is coming over, and you want to impress. There is a reason they all have different colours, designs and packages: They are all trying to stand out from one another.
Standing out is vital for small businesses in established markets with big players. A carefully curated marketing campaign positions your unique story and values. This can help you to steal customers away from the biggest competitors, even if you charge more.
Tony’s Chocolonely is one of the best examples of this. They are a new company, going up against the likes of Nestle and Cadbury who have dominated the market for uses.
They use sustainable packaging, a powerful anti-slavery stance, and a chatty tone of voice. This helps them to stand out on the shelf and encourages people to buy. This is despite being almost twice the price of a normal bar of chocolate.
Builds Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is critical for small businesses. For some business owners, brand awareness is hard to justify because it is so hard to measure. But if you aren’t doing some brand awareness activity, you’re missing out on sales.
If customers don’t know your business exists, they’ll never find you. Brand awareness also builds trust with your audience and cements your business with customers. How many times have you skipped over results in a search or an ad on a social media timeline because you don’t recognise the brand name? Or decided not to use a business because you don’t know if they will deliver on their promises?
It’s probably more than you realise! You can achieve brand awareness through a variety of tactics. Social media ads and viral posts help share your personality. Outdoor marketing helps to share your USPs. Radio ads help worm your brand name into people’s brains while they are passively listening.
Helps You Understand Your Target Audience
The great thing about marketing is that most of it is trackable. And data is your business’s most powerful asset. Market research and data analysis help you understand your customers. You learn about their needs, preferences, and behaviours. Marketing data shows you how customers engage with your brand and use your content. It also reveals how they react to different messages. You can use this information to tweak your marketing strategy. It allows you to enhance the customer experience. It can even guide you in making changes to your products based on how customers interact with your brand.”
Marketing Attracts investors
A lot of small businesses look for Investors. Investors often want to see that you have a solid marketing plan before they invest in your startup. They want to know that you have a plan for reaching your target market and generating revenue. It also helps to show you understand your competitive advantages. By showing that you understand the importance of marketing, you can increase your chances with investors.
Build Credibility and Trust
Marketing helps show your authority on a subject, which helps to build trust and credibility. Blogs, videos, networking, and consistently showing up in front of your audience can help audiences to feel like they can trust you. This is known as Thought Leadership. Additionally, marketing can help highlight positive customer reviews, customer videos and other proof that your company is worth trusting.
Marketing Improves Customer Loyalty
Marketing isn’t just about acquiring new customers. It can also help with retaining existing ones. By staying in touch with your customers through email marketing, social media, and other channels, you can build loyalty and encourage repeat business. Keeping that conversation alive keeps your business top of mind. Remember, on average, it is seven times cheaper to retain a customer than to recruit a new one. So retention is vital.
Attracts Talent
Effective marketing helps attract talented individuals to your small business. Marketing involves promoting your values to customers. Whether you focus on luxury, affordability, sustainability or something else, you can show these in your marketing. Showcasing your company culture and values through marketing helps attract employees who share your vision.
Increases Brand Equity
Brand equity refers to the overall perception of a value and strength of a brand. Brand Equity is a valuable tool as it can be used to increase a company’s financial value and the price they can charge customers. Think of Apple and Nike. How valuable do you think their brand names are? And look at how big their pricetags are compared to their competitors. This is a great example of brand equity. Brand equity is composed of various elements, including: – Brand Awareness – Brand Perception – Brand Loyalty – Brand Associations – Brand Differentiation – Perceived Quality. Raising brand equity can grow customer loyalty, market share, pricing power, and profitability. Strong brands help small businesses create lasting positive impressions with customers.
Helps You Stay Agile And Build Better Products
Marketing helps small businesses adapt to market changes . It builds relationships with customers and encourages valuable feedback. This feedback helps businesses improve products and performance. By using channels like social media, businesses can gather customer feedback and identify market shifts ahead of competitors.
Builds Relationships with Influencers
Marketing can help small businesses build relationships with industry influencers and thought leaders. This tactic helps companies use the networks and platforms of influencers and through leaders. This can help further build credibility and trust, while opening your business to new audiences. Influencers and thought leaders want to work with credible companies to protect their own reputations. Building credibility through marketing helps ease their minds about working with you.
Marketing Drives Referrals
Word of Mouth is still the most powerful marketing channel. When customers have a good experience, they often want to share it. You can use marketing to create relationships with customers and encourage them to refer. You can also incentivise referrals by offering discounts or prizes to customers who bring in friends.
Enhances Customer Experience
Marketing improves the customer experience by giving customers valuable information and resources. Startups can create educational content, tutorials, and resources to help customers shop. Marketing data can also help teams understand customer needs, leading to better experiences. Furthermore, marketing fosters emotional connections with customers. These connections strengthen the relationship, leading to loyalty and forgiveness if issues arise.
Conclusion
To sum it up, marketing is vital for the success of startups. It offers various advantages, including building partnerships, increasing awareness and driving sales. By prioritizing marketing strategies, startups can position themselves for long-term growth and success.