Marketing trends and how they help your business
How does marketing help your business grow?
The American Marketing Association defines marketing as: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
In other words, marketing activities of a company associated with buying and selling a product or service. It includes advertising, selling and delivering products to people.
How marketing affects a business?
In the words of Peter Drucker: “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”
Marketing doesn’t just “impact” a business – it is the function that saves a business from closing down.
Marketing has various benefits such as:
1. Increasing Opportunities: Marketing your business can have a large impact on new businesses by creating large barriers for their entry into an established market. For new companies, brands or products, marketing and advertisement can serve to inform customers about the new product and stimulate interest in the marketplace.
2. Sales Enablement: While it’s possible for a company to sell products directly to the public, using marketing tactics increases product awareness and makes the product visible to a larger audience, which in turn increases sales and revenue. Marketing can identify shifts in buying behaviour.
3. Strategy formation: We aren’t just talking about marketing strategies here. The company’s overall strategy such as resource allocation, product launch or product development strategy, expansion strategy as well as HR strategy – whichever the case may be, it is important that the company’s marketing strategy is in line with the company’s overall strategy.
4. Market awareness: Whether you’re a brand new company or an established company coming with new or innovated products, market awareness is what drives your sales and revenues up. It is important to use effective marketing tools and reach out to your target market in order to create market awareness for your brand. These include but are not limited to thought leadership, search engine marketing and speaking at industry events.
5. Lead Generation: Inbound marketing is a rather recent phenomenon that is revolutionising the way companies undertake marketing and selling operations. It also aids in spreading the brand’s message and creating awareness.
6. Customer retention and growth: A company’s customers can broadly be divided into two types – recurring and new. While expanding the customer base is an important target for companies, they must also remember to keep their existing customers content and satisfied. Proper marketing can ensure that your existing customers stay connected with the company and remain loyal to the brand. Use of communication channels like newsletters and social media to share updates and company news with your customer is one of the various ways to ensure customer retention and growth.
What are the current marketing trends?
There will always be certain time bound trends that need to banked upon while they’re hot. Here are three of the hottest trends in marketing that will definitely blow up your business:
1. Influencers and communities: Influencers help instil a feeling of trust among their followers, as their recommendations are valued and respected. Community building on the other hand creates a whole base of customers that will help market your product or offering amidst their circles. With social media networking sites gaining more and more popularity and traffic, influencers and community groups remain the number 1 hit trend for the year.
2. Content: Content marketing is becoming more and more popular. With so many options for content, customers expect to be “info-tained” and not just informed. Therefore, content too remains a hot trend for the year.
3. Video marketing: The emerging trend for this year is video marketing. Major companies such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are investing heavily in developing video content, which is a clear indication that consistent, original, and engaging videos have the potential of going viral at any time.
Therefore, marketing is really important for businesses, as it informs, equalizes, sustains, engages, sells and grows a business’ operations and offerings.
