Executive Summary
- Marketing helps organizations succeed by communicating with customers and differentiating from competitors, helping your organization get discovered and empowering people to make a choice
- Companies must effectively leverage marketing in order to best serve customers and help differentiate themselves from an ocean of products and service options available
- Organizations should look at marketing as a competitive advantage rather than strictly a sales augmentation department
- Marketing works because it essentially creates profit margin by increasing intangible value received by the customer
Marketing is sometimes met with skepticism because it falls in between public relations and sales. Its ROI is not always tangible and organizational leaders often wonder what the significance and importance of marketing relate to. This is a common question we receive from prospects and one which we'll endeavour to answer here. Most pointedly speaking, marketing accomplishes 5 things when done well. Similar to sales or any other function in an organization, when it is not effective it offers liabilities rather than value. Let's look at the organizational success outcomes and how to tell when marketing is functioning optimally.
Here are the ways that marketing can power organizational success
1-Communicating with customers
Organizations use marketing to communicate with customers. Although larger corporations may choose to segregate these functions later on, for most organizations marketing serves as the team that presents public announcements, company updates, or simply raises awareness of industry issues. Organizations can provide timely advice for customers considering multiple services while also informing them of upcoming products or roadmap features for SaaS organizations. If your product is truly looking to meet the felt needs of your target demographic, marketing is an essential channel to not only communicate with but also to hear from customers.
Example - marketing has evolved so that companies can use technology to listen and respond to customers:
Organizations use social media to not only communicate the latest updates about their team but also uses it as a transparent means to provide customer service. Take WestJet for example - which uses twitter to communicate outages, flight delays, and simply to field customer inquiries.
2-Differentiating yourself from competitors
One of the biggest surprises is the way that business owners view their industry. They feel that customers should already know that they are different from their competitors and often do not communicate these differentiating factors. In a marketplace full of dry cleaners, car washes, and burger stands, marketing is the only way for an organization to distinguish itself. Based on marketing you can actually target a certain type of individual that your brand or image will resonate with. For organizations looking to attract trendy and lifestyle clientele, design, brand, and experience all matter.
Example - marketing influences the 3 criteria for purchasing: past experience, perception, and price
In the cereal aisle there are dozens upon dozens of varieties of cereal. The only way a person strolling through the cereal lane can choose is based on a combination of past experience, perception, and price point. When we look at past experience, there is typically a household provider who chooses the type of food that enters a home. This is typically a parent or a grandparent. They've also based their choice of what cereal to purchase on the same criteria listed above with one distinction if we trace back far enough - they only have perception and price. This is because at one point every cereal was a new product and similar cereals could only compete on perception and price. In that way, the organization that can best communicate and connect with their target customers will be the one that thrives.
3 - Marketing helps people find a product or service affordably
One way to meet customers is to go to an industry tradeshow to demonstrate and speak directly with clients. Yet the acquisition cost of finding clients is significant with the need to pay employees time, travel expenses, and event costs. Marketing helps organizations acquire customers efficiently and at scale. Further, marketing helps an organization get found by distilling an issue or want faced by the people your team is focused on serving. Whether the individual is considering doing something about their need or want or is simply unaware that they had one or that a solution existed, marketing provides a way for people who've never heard of your company before to engage and start problem-solving. Successful organizations require this kind of marketing to educate, inform, and engage the people they are looking to work with. In this way, effective marketing is all about helping people discover great products.
Example - did you know there is a company giving sight to the blind?
A company called eSight is using storytelling and social media to create awareness that legal blindness is no longer an issue. The prospect of resolving blindness for millions of people in Canada and around the world is an exciting story and one that should be celebrated. For most people, this issue remains a fact of life rather than history. Marketing helps raise awareness for new and innovative solutions to problems that have existed for ages.
4 - Marketing empowers a customer service culture
Marketing that seeks to inform and educate is actually a precursor to customer service. Informative, helpful content and articles can already be at the forefront of a customer relationship helping your team build an unshakeable trust with those you are hoping to work with. Organizations that have the best content and resources to offer their people of preference, stand to be the first ones they contact when they are ready to take action.
Example - WaterSmart is helping to educate homeowners on water products
WaterSmart provides a wealth of resources in their blogs and website on water softeners and plumbing to ensure that their customers are properly informed before they make their choice. WaterSmart helps their customers acquire the lowest total cost of ownership while combatting industry misconceptions and sales scams in the Kitchener Area.
5 - Marketing enables a moveent, sales generation, and influences culture
Whether you are an NGO looking to raise awareness about an epidemic or humanitarian crisis or an organization offering a stellar product that helps people get free from monotonous work, marketing helps you reach the right people and empowers them to take action. Marketing is an evolving field and the exciting part is that it is helping to inform and shape our culture today. Our clients typically face an uphill challenge when working to define the right balance between corporate performance and citizenship. We believe marketing can help enable companies to better reflect on the direction of their organization while also empowering them to find great ways to reach the people they need to. Whether it be likes, purchases, or referrals, marketing enables companies to go further than they've ever gone before.
Other Articles You Might Be Interested In
- Marketing and the importance of it on culture and society (coming soon)
- Why marketing works (coming soon) and briefly discussed here
Profitworks helps organization succeed with marketing
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We've helped companies across Canada and the US succeed with marketing because we believe in the beauty and meaning of every article written, email sent, and social media post made. Our team endeavours to create unique marketing competitive advantage to all of our customers and would be thrilled to learn more about your mission and plans for your team. Profitworks provides marketing strategy, content marketing, branding, and social media management for great companies with a stellar product or service.
