Udemezue John
Introduction.
There are many reasons why people decide to set up their own business organizations. Some people do it only for money to maximize earnings while others want to support society, some decided to do what they are passionate about, and it became giant cooperation.
These reasons are all OK, as long as you have the means to do so. When it comes to starting a business, there are usually three different groups of people who set up new businesses.
The first group includes the people who have already had experience with establishing a business on their own because they did it in the past.
The second group includes those who are in the process of starting up their first business and have no experience in being entrepreneurs, they love the freedom that comes with starting a business of your own.
And, the third group of people includes all of those who are considering setting up their own company in the future but have not done anything about it yet.
No matter, if your goal for setting up a new business is to finally become your own boss because you are fed up with being told what to do at your current job, or you are just blindly trying to follow your passions, owning your own business can be a life-changing experience.
So, you decided to start this business, you pushed for capital, set up the structure, and created a great product, but one thing keeps disturbing you, and that is how you intend to market that business.
The purpose of marketing is to help businesses grow efficiently and reach their highest potential for ROI by promoting brands, products and services.
Marketing promotions usually focus on boosting content engagement, increasing sales of products and services and growing brand awareness. Marketing and promotions can be traditional, digital or both.
Reasons Why Marketing is Important in Business.
When starting a new business, one fact you should be aware of is that your competitor is actively marketing their products and expanding their customer base. However, all hope should not be lost because that is why they are a competition.
All you need do is simply conduct research on what your target market is expecting, and then find ways to deliver better products or services.
Here are some reasons why marketing is important to your business.
1. Marketing helps build brand awareness.
Brand awareness is important because consumers would identify with something that they are familiar with, whether they are trying something new or performing a daily task.
Brand awareness refers to how recognizable an organization is based on its logo, style and reputation.
Brand awareness helps businesses retain customers and reach new ones. Effective marketing can help generate brand awareness by placing a brand where consumers or other businesses might see it.
2. Marketing helps engage with your audience.
Customers want to feel the brand that they are engaged with, so therefore a business may engage with customers or other businesses through social media, email or customer service.
One marketing strategy that can help your business engage customers is creating social media and SEO content like blogs or articles.
Using this method may help boost customer engagement and develop lasting relationships because you can customize your content to your target audience’s interests.
Communication marketing is also important because it can influence how customers view businesses.
3. Marketing helps boost sales.
There is always a product or service offered by a business and marketing is one factor that fuels the delivery of such product or service.
Marketing can also target individuals or groups who may be more likely to buy a business’s product or service.
A business may use its analytics to re-target former customers who all bought a similar product when releasing an updated version of the product.
4. Marketing provides insights into your business.
Marketing analytics can provide data and numbers to help professionals make informed marketing decisions that will achieve the greatest ROI.
A business may use marketing analytics to identify audiences who previously didn’t engage with their business, then develop future campaigns that specifically address those audiences to engage them.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing comprises all marketing efforts that use the internet. These include digital channels such as search engines, email, websites, social media, etc., that can be used to connect with current and prospective customers.
Unlike traditional methods, digital marketing helps you reach a larger audience and target prospects who are most likely to buy your products and services. Additionally, it is more cost-effective than traditional marketing. Plus, it enables you to measure success and make marketing changes as you see fit
The key to successful marketing has always been about connecting with the target audience in the right place, at the right time.
Today – when screen-time of consumers is at an all-time high – the best place to meet them is: on the Internet. Businesses worldwide are taking advantage of this reality.
They are using effective digital marketing strategies to ensure their marketing efforts are more likely to reach customers and will, in turn, lead to significant commercial benefits.
Pros of Digital Marketing.
With more than 7+ Billion people on the internet, you can connect with your audience easily on the internet through digital marketing.
But what exactly are the advantages of digital marketing? I have decided to expand on some of the benefits of these advantages in this section.
1. Digital Marketing has a Global Reach.
With more than 7 billion people on the internet, spanning various nationalities, locations and continents, it’s safe to say that the reach of digital marketing is limitless.
Traditional marketing is restricted by geography and creating an international marketing campaign can be hard, expensive, as well as labour-intensive.
However, digital marketing happens on the Internet, which means that they reach you can achieve with it is immense. The combination of global reach and visibility is a great opportunity for any business.
2. Digital Marketing has a huge Local Reach.
Digital marketing as a tool can be used for global and local reach tools, local visibility can also be improved using digital marketing.
Local SEO and locally targeted ads can be beneficial for companies trying to bring more customers to their doors.
Tools like Google My Business can be used to optimize your local SEO and bring customers living close to your brick-and-mortar business.
3. Digital Marketing is cheap.
The cost of a Television, Billboard and printing flyers outpaces the cost of placing an ad on Facebook. Digital marketing allows even the smallest companies to compete with larger companies using highly targeted strategies.
Most of these strategies won’t even cost anything at all to start with (such as SEO, social media, and content marketing).
4. Easy to Learn.
Digital marketing might sound a bit complex, but remains one of the easiest marketing concepts to understand.
Anyone can learn about digital marketing in less than a week, While there are many aspects of digital marketing that you need to learn, it is fairly easy to get started with.
5. Digital Marketing Provides Effective Targeting.
A major drawback in traditional marketing is the fact that you dont get to control who sees your ad.
Even if you don’t have a clear idea of your target audience, digital marketing enables you to extract data to see which audiences will work best for you and optimize your campaign around them.
There are many different options of targeting such as through keywords for search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), or demographic information on social media.
With digital marketing, you get to analyze changing behaviours of customers and modify campaigns for those changes.
Cons Of Digital Marketing.
Now that we understand some of the benefits of digital marketing, here are some of the cons of digital marketing.
1. Digital marketing is highly competitive.
We understand that digital marketing sets the playing field equal, but it still comes with its own drawback and one of them lies in the fact that you have to compete with other brands for the same space.
Digital marketing campaigns have become very competitive, thus brands have to be relevant to the needs of the customers and be quick in responding.
2. Digital marketing is Dependent on Technology.
Digital marketing is purely based on technology and the internet is prone to errors. There are times when the links may not work, landing pages may not load, and page buttons just don’t simply do their job.
This leads the prospective customers to turn their backs on such an ad and guess what, you just lost a potential Lead.
3. Digital Marketing is Time Consuming.
So you want to create an ad for your business, so many companies ts have to be brought together and they may include, keyword research, creatives, Landing pages and many others, making it a time-consuming process.
Unorganized tactics and strategies may consume a lot of time and often it becomes difficult to devote the desirable time to the campaign. This will eventually lead to negative results.
Therefore, it has been suggested to focus on a strategy that the company needs the most and then accordingly plan and curate the content.
What Is Traditional Marketing?
Traditional marketing is any form of marketing that isn’t online. Traditional marketing means print, broadcast, direct mail, phone, and outdoor advertising like billboards. It can also refer to a form of promotion that reaches an audience offline.
Pros of Traditional Marketing.
Although traditional marketing has been shadowed by digital marketing in many industries, it is still effective in boosting your brand, most especially if you intend to target an audience in a specific geographical location. Here are some of the Pros of traditional marketing.
1. Traditional marketing allows you to connect with a local audience.
Traditional marketing plays an important role in reaching local audiences and interacting with customers on a personal level.
Let’s say you want to communicate a brand message to your target market, one way to do this is to pass such a message in the local dialect of the people in such location.
Traditional marketing can help you achieve that effect without any hassle.
Customers will choose businesses that they feel have a genuine interest in their well-being and lives.
Traditional tactics such as marketing collateral, newspaper ads, local TV commercials or billboards put your company in the heart of your community and your customer base.
As a result, your efforts to reach your target audience feel more organic and less corporate.
2. Promotional Materials used in traditional marketing are Sustainable
Traditional methods of marketing are more sustainable and leave a longer impression on your audience.
You can get more mileage from the same TV commercial, flyers, business cards or brochures. Therefore, you don’t have to produce new material as often to promote your product or service.
Also, traditional marketing enables you to carry your marketing materials everywhere you go without hassle, you can meet up with someone that you once and immediately start a discussion with the existing promotional materials in your possession.
3. Traditional Marketing Establishes Credibility.
Nothing beats the fact that your brand is trying to connect with its local audience.
From a psychological standpoint, traditional marketing gives a company more credibility than online marketing.
Printed material and ads on larger mediums are often viewed as more trustworthy. One of the reasons for this is the brands that utilize this are usually closer to the people.
Also, a company that can place an ad in a magazine or a commercial on television and radio, must have the financial means to do so. So, the perception is that the company is growing, successful and stable.
4. Hard Copy Marketing Materials Can Be Easier To Process.
one advantage of traditional marketing over digital marketing is that you are able to leave an impression on your audience for a much longer period because they get to have one of your marketing materials such as banners and flyers.
While there is no question about how impressive digital marketing images, graphics and photos can be, sometimes all the intricate designs combined with animated features can overload the senses.
Hard copy marketing materials can be easier to process and perform better when it comes to brand recall. Direct mail can take less effort to read and process than email.
A brochure may be easier to skim through than a white paper or a website. A 30-second commercial on TV may be more digestible than a three-minute YouTube video.
Cons of Traditional Marketing.
Traditional marketing can be more expensive than digital marketing. This is especially true when you add in the total costs of production and the media buy. Apart from the expenses, here are some of the cons that come with traditional marketing.
1. Traditional marketing is expensive.
Getting your ads displayed on TV can cost you a lot for a new brand, the same applies to banners and billboards. Not all brands are able to afford it, most especially, if it’s a startup.
2. Traditional marketing is not measurable.
Another downside of traditional marketing is the fact that it is not as measurable as digital marketing.
You dont really know how many people are watching a TV station at a particular time, or digested your banner at a particular time.
While there are services to estimate TV viewership and billboard drive-bys, they are still estimates, and such figures are not certain.
3. Traditional marketing takes time to execute.
Traditional marketing can take longer to execute and refine than digital campaigns. Producing a print ad takes time—and rounds of edits, the same goes for flyers and Billboard ads. Once the ad is done, it is done. There is no going back to changing colour, font or word.
4. Traditional ads do not allow you to target your audience.
Let’s say your business is in the insurance industry, traditional marketing would not help you when targetting the right kind of people for your business, even if you run TV ads, it might be shown to a teenager who does not need insurance. Traditional marketing doesn’t have the same ability to target and sub-segment as digital marketing.
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