I want to talk about the importance of marketing in every company. It is not important the kind of business you have, marketing is essential.

Firstly, we must understand what marketing is. There are many definitions of marketing, we can consider marketing every activity to promote and sell more products or services. Essentially, we cannot separate Marketing, Sales and Business development, they are totally integrated, and they must be coordinated under a unique direction and they should move always in agreement.

The next question could be why the marketing activities are so important? Marketing is essential to be identified from customers, to show the differences from our competitors and to be on top at preferences from our customers.

The customers are hit from many communications from different channels, and we must be better or, at least, competitive.

Probably the next question is: which are the activities of marketing? Potentially every activity can be marketing, the key is the measurement. If we cannot measure our activities, we cannot evaluate what we are doing and probably we are not doing marketing but only some nice activity.

The activities should be done with a vision on 2 periods: short and medium. Often the strategy for the short period conflicts with the one for the medium period but, to have a result, they must be integrated and balanced, to always show continuity and coherence.  

Marketing is marketing if, at the end of the short or medium period, we sell more, if not, it is probably only a nice artistic exercise.

Many companies have a super product or service, the idea that a good product can sell itself is very diffused…but it is not true. The word of mouth is absolutely important, but it does not grow itself, it must be built and fed, and it needs marketing. Marketing is what feeds it.

The strategy of marketing should be created when the product or service is designed. Every product or service is created to be sold and the idea about how we will sell it, helps to design every single step of production and, sometimes, suggest some upgrade. A good strategy of marketing integrates Internal communication, training, traditional marketing activities and online marketing. Every strategy of marketing has an important base of analysis before, to understand the customers’ point of view, define the right targets and analyse market and competitors. But the analysis never stops, the measurement of performance is the key to understand if our strategy works and how we can improve it. From the analysis we also receive the feedbacks from markets, very useful data to improve products and services but also to create upselling and cross selling.

Marketing means a permanent study to keep the control of the situation and take the right decisions. If we have the control on the happenings, we can change the strategy, predict the trends, and use all opportunities.

Marketing is a key department of company; it should not be left at the fortuity or at someone does only some nice posts on social networks, also if they create amazing images. The Online marketing is today fundamental but remember: the new customers arrive more frequent from traditional marketing activities; the online marketing is a good reinforce of them. Marketing is always a mix of different actions on different channels for each determined target.

The investment on marketing should be evaluated yearly with a budget, after a good analysis of the old campaigns and with a clear idea of the results we want to achieve. The strategy should be open at new opportunities and, normally, it is different year by year because the market evolves fast, the customers change and because the perfect strategy does not exist. I am sure that the strategy of last year was not perfect, why should we replicate it?!

I hope you can now have a better idea about the importance of marketing and why it should be seriously considered. If you do not use the fortuity to choose the person to manage the production or design the service, or do the customer service, you should use the same attention to take someone for marketing…and sales, because they live together, always, marketing does not exist without sales and the sales cannot be done without marketing.

Let me know how you manage your marketing, which is your budget, share with me the results, I am happy to have your experience. If you like the video click the like, subscribe my channel, and follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Share the video with a friend that needs some help on marketing or tag him, he could find inspiration.

Stay Competitive!