5 reasons marketing is still important in 2020
It's amazing to meet small business owners who managed to bag one or two customers who will blatantly say they don't need marketing because it doesn't work. Recently when speaking to one business owner whose company is new in digital marketing he was adamant that they would never get on social media because it doesn't work and he has witnessed how useless it is for his friends who have their own businesses.
You can not argue with someone making such a statement even though they have called you in to help their business increase their sales by at least getting 1/2 more customers monthly in a high ticket organization. You cannot argue that it's true digital marketing efforts have failed many times for many businesses. Even as you read this whether or not you are a professional marketer I'm sure you can think of many cases when a digital marketing campaign was a complete flop.
The next best thing to do with such a customer is to present a few questions so that they may ponder on them and get to see how their thinking about digital or any effort in marketing is. When presented with the questions - when your digital marketing effort after 2/3 or even 12 months failed what did you learn? What was the response from people if there was any? How often where you posting content and was it engaging? Did you change your approach when you saw no results?
What happens is you realize that the answers they give on what they did are the reason they were failing and started believing digital marketing does not work. This is usually not even old school people, these are people who went about it the wrong way often time without any form of strategy. When they answer these questions they realize they may need a change in their approach. There is a reason even the biggest companies are still doing marketing and keep investing more time, creative and money into improving their marketing. These reasons are:
- Makes selling easier
No matter what business you are in and who your customers are, be it other businesses, government or everyday consumers, marketing makes it easier to sell. This is also true if you are looking for investors. Marketing ensures that one way or the other you are in front of your customers and they know about you, your brand, business or idea. Can you imagine Coca Cola making so many sales without their genius marketing? If your answer is yes then I will ask again; CAN YOU IMAGINE COCA-COLA MAKING SO MANY SALES WITHOUT ANY FORM OF MARKETING?
The truth is no, you cannot, the brand has have grown big enough to not need to invest that much time and money on marketing but the truth is they need to. The reason for this is number two.
2. Stay relevant
It's fairly simple to undermine the importance of staying relevant but if you think about it, it's one of the main reasons brands fall of the wagon when they don't make this one of the priorities. Think about it this way, have you ever noticed how a musician who doesn't tour, do any radio, tv interviews or stay active online eventually disappears out of your mind and many other fans? Why is that? You can't say it's because their hit songs started sounding like annoying voice, most talented musicians make timeless music.
The reason that happens to them is that they stop doing marketing and retaining relevance. Your customers need to constantly hear from you, this is why content marketing is also tricky or time-consuming, it is literally an everyday thing and you cannot repeat yourself too much. Using the same photo or video over and over as you would with a TV commercial.
3. Research and collecting data
Is it not true that before any marketing effect you have to do some research and put together data that you will then translate to help create a strategy? Even with that initial research, you will test your data through your marketing efforts just so you can collect more data and use current relevant to your business numbers. The market is constantly evolving, competition pops up all the time as you get more successful more me-too businesses join in for the loot.
Because of this your customer's behavior changes from time to time costs or marking fluctuate and the algorithms on all your preferred platforms update changing the way you do things. So it's important to consistently do your marketing and collect all the data and keep evolving with your market. There's a saying - Adapt or die - in business, you must adapt or suffer consistently until you die.
4. It is engaging
Notice how the headline is why marketing is still important in 2020, not just digital marketing but marketing as a whole. If you can afford to invest in it traditional marketing becomes advantageous for your brand because you get in front of your customers even when they are not on their phones or computers. One of the best forms of traditional marketing especially for collecting data is brand activations.
With brand activations, you have your customers not only seeing your brand but interact with promoters who will be representing your brand. By having this take place your brand is getting personal with your customers and engaging with them on a more emotional level which personalizes your brand. People buy from people, this has been said multiple times and this is why some companies still invest in brand activations.
It's like selling a painting and allowing your customers to see the texture, smell the canvas and witness or feel the emotion of it without getting blue light from their screen into their brain. You can also collect real-world data through brand activations. People leaving their honest reviews about your brand, service and their experience with your brand. It is to an extent better than online reviews.
It's easy to leave a bad online review over the smallest thing when one is already in a bad mood over something that happened at home or in traffic.
5. It's a catalyst to growth
In a bad economy, most businesses especially smaller businesses will cave and opt with spending less on marketing and other things to save money. Why is it though when this happens the bigger companies will invest in more marketing and advertising promoting their products even more? Marketing is the one way to ensure that you either maintain or grow the size of your business.
By investing more in marketing, whatever that means for your business you are able to eventually see growth, provided that you are strategic of course and are not defining insanity.
Marketing can be a bit stressful and have you almost questioning the whole process but remembering these reasons and many more is essential to ensure you never stop investing in marketing