Marketing is a key factor in acquiring new customers and the success of any business. Yet a common mistake for a new entrepreneur is to forget how important marketing is.
But how do you start marketing? What does it actually entail? Are marketing and advertising the same thing? Many might ponder these very questions when it's time to start the famous marketing of their own company.
In this blog post, we will not only discuss ways to advertise (which you probably already know), but we will also introduce you more deeply to what marketing and advertising are and how they can be effectively implemented. Additionally, we will consider whether a company should handle its marketing internally or outsource it.
What is company marketing really about?
The most important thing we want you to know is that marketing is not just advertising.
Marketing involves the planning, execution, and analysis of actions and processes aimed at increasing sales. For a company to succeed, it must have a foolproof marketing strategy, which is essentially a plan to successfully bring a product or service to market.
Your marketing strategy, on the other hand, explains how you plan to reach potential customers and convert them into paying customers. This plan includes, among other things, market research, product development, distribution, media planning, value proposition, brand message, target audience, sales strategy, customer service, and finally, advertising.
Marketing is therefore a very broad and versatile entity that helps to position your product or service in the right communicative light, thereby assisting your potential customer in purchasing the product or service they need.
The Key Differences Between Marketing and Advertising
Although marketing and advertising are often confused with each other, they are not nearly the same thing.
As we mentioned above, marketing is a set of actions through which you present your product or service in the right light and convince potential customers why they should choose your product. Advertising, on the other hand, is just a part of marketing.
Advertising supports a company's marketing, and its purpose is, of course, to bring your product or service to the attention of potential customers. If you want to advertise your product successfully, it is advisable to refine the company's marketing strategy before starting advertising.
For advertising to lead to effective sales, it must work well in conjunction with the other previously mentioned parts of the marketing strategy. For this reason, it is particularly important for the entrepreneur to understand how marketing and advertising differ from each other and how they influence each other.
Successful marketing is based on a good understanding of the target audience.
Successful marketing always involves defining the target audience and having a good understanding of it.
Before implementing a marketing strategy and starting advertising, every company must define its target audience and get to know them thoroughly. If you don't know who you are trying to reach, the entire company's marketing becomes blind guesswork without guarantees of business growth and success.
In this case, implementing cost-effective advertising is almost impossible.
Your target audience consists of the individuals or companies to whom your product or service is directed, and it can be defined by factors such as age, gender, location, income, interests, or other criteria. Knowing your target audience precisely makes your company's communication clear and helps you address exactly those people who are interested in buying from you.
In addition to having a precise understanding of your target audience, your communication should vary depending on which stage of the buying journey your customers are in (awareness, interest, purchase decision, or advocacy). In successful advertising, people at different stages are addressed in different ways.
That's why you need to know how your target audience thinks at any given time and ensure that advertising is carried out at the right time.
Branding serves as the foundation of a company's marketing.
In addition to knowing your target audience, branding is one of the most critical aspects of marketing, as your brand is what sets you apart from competitors, adds value to your product or service, and appeals to your target audience. If you truly want to succeed, you need to create a strong brand from the very beginning, upon which the company's marketing is built.
Branding has many dimensions, of which logo design is perhaps the best known. A well-designed logo helps a company to be recognizable and memorable.
Branding, however, involves much more than just a logo, such as the entire visual identity of the brand and the brand strategy, which help make your company consistent. A consistent, strong brand sets you apart from other players in the industry and helps make your company valuable, reliable, and well-known. Through branding, you also create the image of your company that you want to market to others.
Before you start advertising a product or service, you need to know how you intend to make your company, brand, and marketing materials cohesive. Your website, social media profiles, emails, business cards, and product packaging should all be unified by a coherent look and feel.
Since successful branding requires strong expertise in everything from marketing, graphic design, to corporate communication, in most cases it may be more sensible to leave brand design to professionals.
If you need help creating an impressive brand, you can explore our brand design services here.
Digital marketing also differs from digital advertising.
Digital marketing is also confused with digital advertising, but they too differ from each other.
For example, automating the purchasing processes of an online store and installing a chat bot are digital marketing, whereas digital advertising is communication aimed at capturing the target audience's attention and sparking interest.
To succeed, digital marketing and advertising both require, in addition to technical expertise, a deep understanding of both marketing and customer behavior. To ensure results, it is important to create marketing and advertising strategies that are always tailored to your company, goals, and target audience.
Before starting digital marketing or advertising, you should have a foundation of a company marketing strategy, a strong brand, and a website that presents your product or service in the right light. This way, you ensure that all aspects of the company work seamlessly together, and you won't be left empty-handed when the ads don't work as planned.
"A strategically designed website is the core of sales and customer acquisition. If the site does not generate new customers and sales, it does not matter how much traffic is brought there through advertisements or other means."
"Therefore, we often have to tell our clients that we cannot conduct effective marketing until their website has been updated to a state where it effectively drives sales objectives."
Only when your website and other parts of the company work together to promote sales, can you truly implement cost-effective digital marketing or advertising that appeals to your potential customers.
Where should one start with digital marketing or advertising?
Let's assume that the foundation of the company is in place at this stage, and you are finally planning to grow your business through digital marketing and advertising.
At the beginning of the week, it is advisable to set clear goals for digital marketing and advertising that are linked to the objectives of your broader marketing strategy. Good, typical goals include, for example, the immediate increase of leads and sales or raising awareness and creating a brand image, thereby growing the company in the long term.
When considering the first steps in digital marketing or advertising, often the best place to start is where you know your target audience will definitely be. Especially at the beginning of your operations, you don't need to be as active as possible everywhere; rather, it is more important to test different methods and find the most profitable channels for you.
Effective digital marketing and advertising methods include, for example:
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Advertising in digital channels
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Producing organic social media content
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Email Marketing
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Writing a blog
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Conversion Optimization
Advertising (Instagram, Facebook, and Google advertising)
Instagram, Facebook and Google advertising is an excellent way to start marketing your business, as through these channels you can increase sales regardless of the size of your company.
Paid advertising is a significant part of many companies' marketing because ads can be targeted specifically to those individuals who are already interested in the company. These ads reach the right people quickly, making paid advertising particularly effective.
Although recent changes in data protection have reduced the options for targeting paid advertising, when done correctly, the results are still excellent. Excellent results are achieved by producing high-quality advertisements that interest the target audience, with images and texts that capture the viewer's attention.
If you want to gain more visibility and social media followers, you can best achieve this goal with Facebook and Instagram ads. You can also increase visibility with Google's Display ads, i.e., banner ads. In this case, your ads will appear on news sites, YouTube, and other websites.
If your goal is to increase sales as quickly as possible, you should attract people directly to your website using Google search advertising. With search advertising, you gain more visibility in search engine results when people search for the products or services you offer online.
The downside of paid advertising is that succeeding in it usually requires at least a few months of learning, doing, and continuous testing. If you want to skip these steps and jump straight to results, check out the Instagram, Facebook, and Google advertising we have done.
Producing organic social media content
In organic content production, no money is spent on advertising, meaning all visibility on social media is gained through natural means. This marketing method may suit you, for example, when you want to share valuable content, talk about your product or service, and interact with your followers, but do not have enough resources for advertising.
Although growing social media organically requires a significant amount of work, it usually also yields rather slow results. Therefore, to achieve the best results, most companies implement advertising and produce organic content simultaneously, which is often the best strategy on social media.
If your goal is to gain more real web traffic, leads, and sales instead of followers on a fast schedule, it might also be wise for you to turn to a hybrid model and advertising.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is an excellent way to stay in touch with your target audience and keep your customers updated on your company's activities. You can use email to promote new products, announce offers, or simply share valuable content.
Email marketing has long been one of the most effective marketing methods due to its high return on investment and low or even negligible costs. With email, you can directly address those individuals who are already interested in your offerings – after all, they have chosen to join your email list.
Since creating an email list is usually free, it is advisable to start growing it as early as possible. The quickest way to grow the list is to offer a free sign-up gift that benefits your target audience on your website, landing page, or blog.
When you grow your email list, you can keep your target audience updated on your products or services and introduce both old and new customers to current offers. At the same time, you can encourage the reader to, for example, shop in your online store or listen to your new podcast episode.
If you want to increase your sales through email, check out our email marketing here.
Writing a blog
A blog is versatile, as it allows you to build your brand, increase your recognition as an industry expert, improve your website's search engine ranking, and even boost your sales.
Before you start planning the content of your blog, it is advisable to clearly define its goal or goals. By writing a blog, you can conveniently share your thoughts and insights about your industry, so its goal can simply be to build relationships with readers. You can also use the blog to acquire new leads and customers by encouraging readers to visit your product pages or join your email list.
Since Google rewards websites that regularly publish fresh and search engine optimized content, producing high-quality blog posts can help improve your search engine ranking. For this reason, more and more companies are dedicating their time to writing and maintaining a blog.
Writing a blog is an especially good marketing tool for a company when you want your site to appear higher in search results and attract more visitors.
If your own time is not enough to maintain a successful blog, check out our content creation services here.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important part of a company's digital marketing, as it allows you to improve your website's visibility and attract more visitors both quickly and in the long term.
By optimizing your website for search engines, you can improve your ranking on search engine results pages and thus significantly increase the number of visitors to your site. As more and more potential customers find their way to your site, search engine optimization boosts your website's sales and your company's profits.
Search engine optimization includes on-page, off-page, and technical SEO. If SEO is unfamiliar to you, you can learn the basics through online courses, which will certainly get you started. However, learning each different aspect of search engine optimization takes some time and effort.
In addition to the aforementioned, you may lose a significant portion of your money if optimization is not done correctly. Therefore, we recommend working with a reputable marketing agency to ensure that your website is optimized correctly and you get the best possible benefit.
If you want more visitors to your website, read more about the search engine optimization we perform here.
Conversion Optimization
The main goal of conversion optimization is to maximize the conversion of a website, which is most often sales. It is a multi-step process aimed at ensuring that your site converts visitors into paying customers as efficiently as possible.
Conversion simply means any action you would like a website visitor to take. In addition to making a purchase, a desired conversion can be, for example, filling out and submitting a request for a quote form, subscribing to email messages, or even clicking a link.
The content of conversion optimization depends entirely on the situation of your website, but in practice, it involves removing all obstacles to purchasing. Optimization may include, for example, developing the sales funnel and customizing the purchasing process, as well as modifying the site's content, speed optimization, and ensuring mobile-friendliness.
If you want to trade online successfully, it is critical to ensure that your website is optimized for conversions. If technology is not your field, we recommend leaving this aspect of the company's marketing to professionals as well.
If your website has a lot of visitors but sales are not brisk, check out our conversion optimization offerings here.
Starting Company Marketing and Advertising – What to Remember?
A new entrepreneur should remember that company marketing is a multifaceted whole, which includes much more than just advertising. If you want to successfully conduct business online, you need to refine your marketing strategy before starting digital marketing or advertising.
Additionally, you must know your target audience like the back of your hand, and your company should have a strong brand established that serves as the foundation of your business operations. Your website also needs to be strategic in such a way that it makes your product or service appealing to customers.
Since a marketing strategy is always tailored to the company's operations, goals, and target audience, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. A good marketing agency can create a marketing strategy for your company or unify its existing components, providing you with a competitive advantage and a solid foundation for your growth.
Only when all the mentioned aspects of marketing are in order, paid advertising, organic social media marketing, email marketing, blogging, search engine optimization, and conversion optimization are excellent ways to increase the company's visibility, reach potential customers, and grow sales, depending on your target audience.
Outsourcing company marketing and advertising vs. doing it yourself
Now that you know what all is involved in a company's marketing, you might be considering outsourcing it entirely or partially.
Outsourcing marketing is especially worthwhile when you aim for long-term business growth and want to focus entirely on your own expertise. Outsourcing should also be considered in cases where your company's growth has stalled or you lack the time and resources to implement professional marketing.
If you decide to handle part of the marketing yourself, such as digital advertising, you can certainly get started with various information sources. However, learning may take quite some time, and a significant amount of money might be wasted if all actions are not done correctly the first, second, or even the tenth time.
Since marketing is a rapidly changing field, you must also accept that in addition to the basics, you will have to continuously learn new things throughout your entire business operation.
It is also worth remembering that if you do not have a broader marketing strategy, your company's foundation is not in order, or your website is not designed to promote sales, no amount of advertisements or site visitors will boost your customer acquisition.
How to find a suitable marketing agency for yourself?
A good way to find a suitable marketing agency for yourself is to first read reviews and discuss your needs with the agency. This helps the company to better understand your business and goals.
When you are in contact with industry professionals, it is worth asking whether the marketing agency assists in creating a comprehensive marketing strategy and implementing sustainable marketing, or if the agency only offers advertising that is separate from other activities, which is not the key to success – quite the opposite.
"Our customers choose us because at Growly, we focus on comprehensive marketing, where every aspect of the company is refined to work seamlessly together, support each other, and push each other forward. This way, we achieve sustainable business growth, not just quick wins."
We can further state that outsourcing marketing is always advisable when you suspect that your expertise is insufficient for creating and implementing a comprehensive marketing strategy.
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