Why Invest in Marketing?
- Marketing creates value for your customers, which ultimately can help increase sales. Marketing helps communicate the key features and benefits of your product and service. It answers the question, "What's in it for me?" from the customer's standpoint. Marketing is driven by market research, which allows you to listen to the needs of your customers and then deliver customized messages that address their needs, wants and problems. At the end of the day, communicating how your product provides value to your customer helps increase profits.
- Another reason to invest in marketing is to help you build long-term, sustainable relationships with your customers. More and more, companies are using innovative marketing strategies and tactics, such as social media marketing and customer relationship marketing (CRM), to connect with consumers and provide valuable content. Examples of relationship-building ideas marketers use are customer loyalty programs, personalized birthday cards, customer appreciation events, free gifts and product and service deals and discounts. Any time you can develop a marketing program that helps position your brand favorably while simultaneously helping your customer, it is a win-win situation.
- When you choose Southwest Airlines for air travel, for example, you have certain expectations: You may anticipate a particular level of service, no excess baggage fees and certain airfares. Even if these things do not hold true, its marketing materials have positioned its brand to take advantage of its competitors' weaknesses. Marketing can help you build a positive image for your brand. It can help you tell a story and give your brand a personality and life of its own. Ultimately, this may lead to consumers choosing your brand over your competitors.
- Another reason to invest in marketing is it is measurable. This means you can track and measure the effectiveness of every marketing campaign you roll out. For example, you may choose to develop a direct mail campaign in which you send targeted mailings to a list of 1,000 prospective customers. By simply asking each customer, "How did you hear about us?" you can track the effectiveness of your campaign. If you received 20 new customers from your direct mail campaign, you can look back and determine whether this particular marketing medium produced a positive return on your investment.