why is marketing important for a SME?
In order to run a successful small business, you need to devote a sizeable percentage of your budget to marketing, anything between 5% – 15% of your gross revenue.
You also need to get a good grasp on why marketing is important for small businesses. You’ll understand why you need to set aside so much money for marketing when you see why it’s so essential in the first place.
it lets everyone know you exist
As long as your business makes a great product or provides a great service, you might be under the impression that it’ll be easy for your company to stand out. But that is simply not the case. With so many products and services available both locally or worldwide through the internet it easy for companies—even great companies—to get lost in the shuffle.
One of the top reasons why marketing is important for small businesses is because it lets the public know about a company’s existence. You’ll be able to put your small business on the map through your marketing efforts.
it educates customers about your services or products
As the owner of a small business, you spend almost all of your time tinkering with your products or perfecting your services. You know them inside and out and have a clear understanding of how they work.
Marketing gives you a chance to educate your customers about your products and/or services and to show them why they need to buy them from you.
Inbound marketing, in particular, is an effective marketing approach for small businesses. It allows businesses to use a combination of content marketing, social media marketing, and more to educate consumers about the products and services that they sell.
it establishes trust between you and your customers
To make your your business as successful as it can be, you need to build a loyal customer base, those who will come back to your business on a regular basis to buy products and/or services from you.
This requires you to build up a certain level of trust with your customers. They need to trust you to provide them with the best products and/or services at the best prices.
Marketing helps to establish some sense of trust between companies and customers. Companies are able to use marketing techniques to create trust with their customers and keep them coming back for more products and/or services in the future.
it teaches you about your customers
When you first start your business, you might have some idea of who your target audience is going to be based on the products and/or services that you have to offer. But over time, you might find that your target audience isn’t who you thought it would be.
Not only can marketing teach you so much about your customer base you can get feedback too. You can take a look at who responds to your marketing efforts the most and use it to change up who you’re targeting your products and/or services at.
it gives your business sales a boost
At the end of the day, your goal as a small business owner is going to be to make money. You want to sell as many products and/or services as you can to your customers.
As long as you market your products and/or services right, you should be able to drum up sales for your business in no time. Educating consumers about them and talking to people about why they need them will result in more sales over time.
it allows your business to remain relevant
When your small business first opens up or when you first introduce a new product and/or service, it shouldn’t be too difficult generating interest in your brand. There will be a newness to it that will create some buzz.
But once your small business isn’t new anymore or once your product and/or service has been out for a few months, the newness will wear off. Your small business won’t be on the tips of everyone’s tongues anymore.
You can maintain your company’s relevance by using marketing. Marketing will help you continue to maintain connections with your customers, even when you don’t have a new product and/or service to show them.
it provides your business with the opportunity for growth
In business, growth is the name of the game. You want your business to have year on year growth.
Without marketing, growth is pretty much impossible. You’re not going to be able to attract new customers to your business if you don’t have a strong marketing strategy.
The more you market your business, services and products the more you will learn through analysing the results of marketing actions. This will give you greater insights on your customers and therefore you will be able to develop you offerings that they will like and in turn create greater growth for your business.
understand why marketing is important
It’s not difficult to see why marketing is important once you start marketing your small business aggressively. You’ll see your business grow by leaps and bounds in a short amount of time with the right marketing plan.
The key is to make marketing a priority from the beginning—and to stick with marketing once your small business has achieved some success.