Businesses often underplay marketing’s role. It’s time to unravel the unspoken myths and spotlight the reality.
Marketing has always been thought of as a creative field. But by alluding to it merely as a creative space, we often forsake its technicalities and the value it brings. Fair to say, it all depends on the perspective.
Marketing is neither easy nor a one-way street in today’s buying dynamics. The level of complexity it involves can even unnerve industry experts.
For instance, a CMO might understand marketing’s role differently than a CEO. Even its external functionalities are perceived differently from the minute internal operations. Often perceived as a means to build a brand, it’s also the wheel driving an organization’s revenue.
Even being a marketer itself is not just a mundane task. It requires market knowledge and expertise of the entire customer lifecycle journey, systems, and understanding of broader business objectives. The human aspect, i.e., the team possesses such elaborate skills – one cannot highlight any single facet.
From curating strategies, outlining ICPs, and understanding stakeholders’ vision to identifying gaps, implementing campaigns, and measuring performance – marketing entails it all. The intangible definition of marketing to its tangible characteristics is dynamic and ever-transforming.
At the crux, it’s a complex landscape to define.
Marketing is technical but also experimental. It assumes tangible and intangible elements of a business. And its stunted understanding can influence the direction of an organization. Because marketing plays a pivotal role in market expansion and without full awareness of its significance, the business can take a huge plunge into the ocean. And get lost in the market noise to lose its footing.
To ensure this doesn’t happen, brands need to question their misconceptions regarding marketing. This includes stakeholders’ and other decision-maker’s misbeliefs with respect to how marketing can maximize their profitability.
Without debunking common myths concerning marketing, how does one develop effective strategies?
Unraveling Marketing Myths, Decision-makers Hold
Marketing misconceptions can prove detrimental to small businesses and start-ups. There are common misperceptions high-level executives hold that influence and create bias in their decision-making process.
And when the upper management doesn’t hold accurate information, how can the team develop the right strategies? This is a conundrum. But there’s a solution to this – break apart these fallacies and spotlight the correct stance.
Marketing is rainbows (multicolor designs) and sunshine (catchy one-liners).
Yes, marketing is indeed a creative endeavor. It consists of advertising campaigns with bright colors and catchy one-liners. But what about the uninteresting parts?
The final content might be engaging and compelling, but the process is extensive. It requires hours of research and several drafts before the final product comes through. Let’s admit that even designing and content writing might entail significant moments where the process is fun.
There’s an entirely different side – developing campaigns, strategizing, and report-making that are part-and-parcel of repetitive tasks one finds tasking. But, these facets of marketing are what drive the steering wheel to ensure actual numerical outcomes.
The other side of the story plays out differently. It attributes PR and advertising as significant aspects of marketing. However, the truth is quite different.
PR and advertising are entirely different elements of marketing. PR helps maintain and build relationships, and advertising is construed to influence prospect decisions. These are before and after – what about the middle?
This area is also what marketing takes care of. It’s more than about ads, especially traditional means and methods. The focus is actually brand building and understanding what could be the most effective ways to increase the performance of multiple marketing channels.
Long-term trust and loyalty link a brand and its clients. And marketing works as the bridge. From discovery to client support, maintaining a consistent flow of revenue takes more than traditional advertising.
Small businesses and start-ups don’t need marketing teams.
Small businesses might rely on regular customers. Consider cafes – many local cafes depend on regular coffee drinkers for consistent revenue. It’s something we are all aware of.
But this isn’t the case all the time. Different industrial domains hold varied demands – the expectations are widely different. Imagine a tech start-up. The market continuously witnesses the rise of new businesses, and it’s easy to get lost amidst all the noise.
Marketing can be a key resource to change this. It helps expand efficiently and retain a strong customer base.
Word-of-mouth marketing can only help businesses to an extent, especially in close-knit circles. It can displace the clients’ attention to another brand if a better product enters the market. New competition can get ahead of the race at any given time.
However, marketing strategies can offer a consistent means to reduce customer churn rates and expand seamlessly into new territories. Moreover, it’s challenging to forge partnerships without a proper marketing plan.
And in the long run, it may halt or disrupt the brand expansion, subtracting its recognition and reputation in the existing and new markets. It might become exhausting for small businesses, but with the ideal help, marketing can bring modest value to the brand, helping it grow gradually.
Marketing strategies only work on new buyers, not existing ones.
Having regular customers doesn’t mean they won’t pack up their interests and gravitate towards a brand with appealing offerings. That’s why the priority is establishing customer loyalty.
Remarketing to existing clients is a crucial step in marketing that most businesses skip. But it shouldn’t be the case.
Cross-selling and up-selling to existing customers helps retain them for a long time. Because once they have bought from a brand, it doesn’t mean there aren’t any doubts and challenges later on. Remarketing to them helps address their pain points and allows the brand to be on top of their mind.
These are why lifetime loyalty and retention are crucial for businesses to thrive.
Customer’s loyalty towards a brand should match the businesses’ trust in their regular ones. Not attending consistently to the clients can prove detrimental to the company, damaging the market-wide reputation.
When word-of-mouth marketing works wonders, it may affect the brand negatively, also making them lose out on new clients.
The cornerstone here is that retaining clients is not easy. So, it’s crucial to note that marketing efforts shouldn’t merely hope to engage new buyers but also continue targeting existing ones.
Social media doesn’t work for the brand or it’s everything for them.
See, social media is comparatively a new channel for marketing. Traditional methodologies didn’t consider this a major part of their functionalities. But with growing digitization, it’s necessary to sway a little to where the wind blows – to find a delicate balance between keeping up with the trends and finding what fits the brand.
Social media has become an effective and affordable tool for marketers to remain in the rat race. They leverage the consumer’s thirst for snackable and scrollable content by offering them compelling content and ads.
These are the platforms where the customers are most likely to notice the brands.
The diversity in social media users is also transforming. Beforehand, younger generations were more active, but numerous adults have also started using Instagram and Facebook. These are people who earn and have decision-making capabilities.
They are also a principal part of the consumer market, offering brands an advantage – a new audience segment to target and increase their customer base.
It can be resourceful for businesses with a meticulously planned strategy. But just because it’s been gaining traction and entails millions of users doesn’t mean brands should saturate their budgets into just one channel. It might not offer them returns as significantly as they think.
Social media with the right balance can function as a tool for marketing and advertising alongside its own embedded shoppable features.
Good quality products and services can sell themselves. Who requires marketing, right?
This misconception is rampant in the market.
It’s not a complex notion to debunk and also quite self-explanatory. Yes, the brand entails high-quality offerings and a positive buyer experience.
But what if no one knows about it?
Moreover, imagine there is excessive competition, and with access to advanced tech, how difficult is it to come up with solutions of comparable value? With the right resources and time, it’s possible. Not as if the products or services can become the talk of the town by leveraging marketing, but they grab significant attention to make the market realize – Oh hey, I’m new here and would like to make acquaintance with what I have to offer.
There are so many layers that marketing adds to the brand’s perception that it narrows down the prospective buyer’s vision to believe – this solution is curated only with them in mind. This adds a significant edge to businesses that might seem small against the industry giants.
Marketing is a catalyst. It creates awareness regarding the brand’s existence and attracts the right audience to kickstart the revenue wheel. Beyond this, it also highlights the crucial details – from what the brand does to how the solutions can help the prospect.
These steps are unskippable if one of the key objectives is to grow consistently and expand into new markets.
Traditional tools entail no influence in modern marketing.
Marketing, traditionally, is understood as a means to grab attention. And the conventional marketing tactics kept this in focus. Even if this is what most believe in, it’s false.
While modern marketing has unearthed several more complexities and dynamic buyer behaviors, traditional marketing tools still play a pivotal role.
Leveraging traditional marketing channels is a holistic approach. While automation and AI might take the front seat today, TV, radio, and newspapers still hold space in targeting a particular demographic. Or the local audience.
Technically, development and execution decide a lot of things here.
Marketers also believe that email marketing is dead. But to be frank, it’s in between traditional and digital roadways. It plays a significant part in personalizing communication with new and existing buyers. Meanwhile, it also adds a dash of sophistication and professionalism to the entire process.
On the other hand, even the radio is not dead. Podcasts can be said to be the new radio. While podcast advertising does indulge loyal listeners, radio targets the general audience. It actually boosted the reach by penetrating diverse audience segments.
The reality is marketers still leverage these channels and continue to seek effective results.
There are multiple and varying faces to marketing.
Marketing is not just one thing. For different individuals and industrial domains, it can heed varied faces. For a buyer, the perspective might differ compared to a seller. And even within the organization, marketing might mean something different to the CMO and the CEO.
While market conditioning can instill biases into decision-makers, marketers, and prospective buyers, it’s important to never negate its vitality. It’s the first and foremost rule.
Once a marketing team is hired and attributed responsibilities, they develop and execute strategies. If this leads to significant profitability, then who’s to say marketing is faux?
The answer is present within the numbers itself.
Preconceived notions can only harm the brand itself and stunt its growth. But understanding marketing will debunk this thinking.
And there’s more to learn. Especially with the emerging tech-changing society, marketing has also been majorly impacted. It will keep on morphing into something one doesn’t understand.
Rather than consuming misleading conceptions and assuming aspects of marketing, it’s necessary to take a step ahead and educate ourselves. Investigate the minute details and underline the truth.