It Got Me Thinking … Why Market?
With just over 3 months to the end of financial year, thoughts of planning are creeping into business owners’ minds and schedules everywhere (or should be any way). In order to plan for the next year, we need to look at performance from the existing year, the direction and goals for the next year and then the actions to achieve them.
Simple right?
Interestingly, as I discuss business with clients and colleagues, I hear lots and lots of discussion around the many marketing strategies available. What businesses must be doing, where they must be promoting, how they should be presenting etc … which got me thinking – do business owners know why they market?
It’s Wednesday, so I have available an opportunity to pose this question to the members of the Albany Creek Business Contacts. I started by asking, “who has a considered documented business plan for their business”. If this poling is considered a reliable sample size then we have trouble – 3 of the 19 business owners around the table said they did.
So I asked, “you all engage marketing strategies for your business, but why do you market?”
The 6 main reasons agreed upon were:
- increase business,
- brand awareness/presence,
- budgeting/cost allocation,
- establish as expert in your field,
- attract new clients, and
- retain existing clients.
Dan Milgate, Fit 4 Life Personal Training shared, “the purposes of marketing are forward thinking in relation to the strategies.” “By setting marketing goals you can then identify what medium/s and strategy/s to use.”
Businesses market to capture customers through communicating your business’s value proposition. Once goals are set it is then the task to identify and engage the appropriate strategies to achieve these goals. Not all strategies work for every business and those that work for one may not work for another. This is where measuring return and results of the strategies are important so businesses gain the best bang for the buck and are not wasting time and money on strategies that don’t achieve the purpose/s for which they are being employed to achieve.
I think Scott Deaves, David Deane Real Estate should have the last word on this subject as, I believe, he answered beautifully the question why businesses market – “to be in customers shopping baskets”, he said.