Business depends on clients and customers being able to find them. If they can’t find you, they can’t buy your products and the go somewhere else. That is the bottom line.
Many businesses, even in the Digital Age, fail to have a coherent small business marketing strategy.
So, they lose hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars in revenue.
Before we continue, it’s important to define “marketing”, which is this: Marketing is the strategic effort a company does to educate, inform, engage and sell their products online, in person and at the store locations (if any). Marketing may include videos, social media, blogging, live online events (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), advertising, media releases, and promotional events.
Small and medium-sized businesses need to create a marketing strategy for the following reasons:
1. Forces an inventory: When a business is planning to market itself, it has to prioritize its product line. Marketing will spotlight its products (services) that make the most money.
2. Organized branding effort: Brands can become murky or even lost over time. They lose their luster and uniqueness. Marketing often involves re-branding which is a rebuilding of the brand. It may include a new logo, colors, website, spokesperson and public identity.
Branding is absolutely important for a company to survive. A brand is what emotionally ties a company to its customers.
3. Equalizes: Marketing brings small businesses up to the same level as the big businesses in that it competes in the same marketplace for the same customers. Both small and big businesses use the same marketing channels and the internet to engage and sell.
4. Educates: Once a customer learns more about the product, they connect and purchase. Marketing educates the consumer through videos, blogs, websites and other marketing vehicles. The education of prospective clients is a huge service and one that is well worth the effort and cost.
5. Engages: Marketing actually “speaks” to the public through text (copy), photos (images) and videos. Through a strategic and content-driven marketing strategy, businesses can talk with the public.
6. Sells: All of this content generation and marketing has a goal: sell the product. Marketing is about selling. However, it’s not “in-your-face” or condescending. It is creating content that prospects will enjoy consuming and then, hopefully, purchase the product.
7. Connects: Marketing connects the mission, product, and employees with the public. It develops a sympathy for the product. Marketing is all about connecting the product with the public.
Most businesses cannot survive on just word-of-mouth alone. They need a coherent, comprehensive and simple marketing strategy. It’s all about connecting.
Philip Day Communications has an experienced strategic marketing staff that can develop and coordinate a marketing strategy for any-sized business. We have a variety of services from social media to website design to advertising to podcast production. Call us at (434) 227-7829 or email at philip@philipdaycommunications.com. We serve the Charlottesville, Va., Washington, D.C., Richmond, Va. areas and all of the United States.