Why Marketing is Key for Long-Lasting Business Growth

Fail to innovate and market and your business stands still. That means being pushed further and further behind by advancing competitors. Responsive marketing is the key to long-lasting and controlled business growth. And here’s why…

1.   Marketing Answers Questions

One of the most important questions is ‘why do we do what we do?’ The answer to this question is the principle that over-arches every marketing and promotional campaign and tool you use, online and offline.

And this what marketing of your business should do;

• Provide a consistent and constant sense of focus
• Promote a strong emotional engagement with customers, fans and followers (and within your business too)
• Highlight innovation around products and/or services

2.   Establishes and Enhances Brand Awareness

There is a lot written about branding, brand and brand awareness. Branding is about creating uniqueness the envelopes your business. In a competitive market place, it is essential, say many marketing experts, as it gives you the leading edge over competitors.

Everything you produce, from the header of your Twitter account to the printed materials from business cards to exhibitions stands and displays should be planned and executed as part of your brand. In other words, using your logo and a strapline, using the same colour palette.

It should have the same feel and tone to it, right across the range of promotional tools you use, online and offline.

3.   Collaboration and Partnerships

For many businesses, to scale up they need to work with another business in a related field.

Working in collaboration with a like-minded business that compliments your brand, products and services, can double investment and double the impact of a marketing campaign.

This means excellent Return of Investment (ROI) for you and the collaborating partner. Who could you collaborate with?

4.   Marketing that Focuses on Customer Retention

To grow a business, you need not only more new customers but retuning customers too. All too often however, businesses focus their marketing efforts on new customers only.

We’ve all seen the adverts and silently seethed – 50% off a product or service for new customers only, leaving you, the current customer, subsidising the deal.

It is a tactic that has proven to turn returning customers away. Learn from others and take a look at your marketing campaigns, deals and offers: what are offering customers who have already bought from you?

5.   Being Part of a Business Community

Sometimes labelled as a business ecosystem, it is the community in which your business operates.

When you produce a product, a whole community or ecosystem can grow around it. As an example, you may manufacture a piece of technical kit around which other businesses may make compatible components, such as headphones.

As a business, being part of this community prevents you from working in isolation, a barrier already recognised to growing your business. It is harder work growing your business without collaborating, harder still if you are not an active part of the ecosystem bubble within which you operate.

Working with others is crucial to sustainable growth. Business ecosystems were once known as stakeholders, but the idea is essentially the same.

6.   Scalable and Repeatable Sales

You have a great product. You have a brilliant brand. Sales are starting to pick up.

But, can the sales platform on which you have based your fledgling sales scale up to accommodate more sales and more customers?

• Will the productivity level scale to meet demand?
• Are leads being generated on a consistent basis?
• Do you/can you consistently forecast sales?
• Are customers able to get the right product, in the right place and at the right time as you grow?

If the answer is no to any of the questions, even with fantastic marketing, if your business doesn’t have the foundation to grow, it will stutter and wobble.

7.   Marketing Leadership

And finally, you have an adaptive marketing strategy that responds to fluctuations and changes in your market place and customer base.

But it can only adapt if there is strong leadership company wide, but also when overseeing marketing strategies, implementation and review.

Marketing and promoting your business is a ‘thing’ that must be nurtured. It is a constantly changing and evolving process, but to move your business forward, your marketing needs to move forward too.

Is your marketing on a loop process? Do you constantly review and forecast? Is there a firm foundation to your business on which you can grow?

Colour Graphics is a print and design agency that create offline promotional tools for a range of businesses across the country.