Marketing could be described as a circular process that starts with researching the market and potential customers, separating the said customers into groups, studying their individual habits and preferences and openly asking each of the groups what they want from your business. As you find out more about your customers, you create products and services for each group, release them into the public and finally, use customer feedback to further improve your products and services, re-publicize, re-launch, and so on. Looking at these steps, it becomes clear that you can actually use marketing and promotion in more ways than one in order to help your business save time and resources.
Use customer input
Growing and maintaining a business means that business owners face some rather unique challenges along the way. One of these challenges is determining which services should be kept as a part of the business and which ones need to be cut off in order to improve the business. Although this is perfectly understandable, most business owners worry about letting go of a particular product or service. But what does this have to do with marketing?
As we already mentioned, one of the steps in the marketing cycle is asking the customers exactly what they need and want from your business. Combine customer feedback with sales statistics and you will have a solid set of data you can use to make rational decisions. If you have a product or service that doesn’t generate revenue, it’s far better to let go of it and cut down costs than to blindly stick to it and lose potential revenue.
Create tutorials and training videos
Training videos and tutorials are among the easiest and most effective ways to both promote your business and cut down on unnecessary costs. Not only can you save a lot of time and the resources you would normally spend on training new employees, but you can also upload parts or entire videos online as a means of business promotion. This is particularly useful for small businesses with not enough staff members and budgets already stretched thin, and instead of burdening your workers to repeat the same training process over and over again, you can simply make a short three to four minutes long video detailing exactly what you expect from a new employee.
Use unique promotional materials
Although business cards are considered to be a staple of business promotion, almost every individual and company is using them. This does not mean that you should avoid spending resources on business cards, but rather that you should think about other, more unique promotional materials you can use to spread the word about your business. Forget coffee mugs and t-shirts, and think phone and laptop cases, branded fidget spinners or custom stress balls. Using traditional means of advertising is all fine and well, but have in mind that we live in the age where people’s attention shifts quickly from one trend to another, and a smart marketer knows all too well about taking advantage of a trend before it becomes a thing of the past.
Securing and managing finances can be rather difficult, especially for entrepreneurs and small business owners who are actively trying to reduce expenditures and keep the business afloat. When strapped for cash, most businesses cut down on specific services in order to save money, and the HR and marketing teams are almost always the first ones to go. But once you understand that marketing is nothing more than a group of different strategies used by businesses to move specific products and services from manufacturers to consumers, you’ll realize that cutting down on marketing and promotion is simply a bad move for any business.
