The term “marketing” is such a broad and widely-used term in the world of business but a lot of people’s idea of marketing is greatly confused. Marketing actually involves public relations, promotions, and multiple avenues of advertising. Essentially, the success of a small business is solely dependent on how well the business owner can market the products and services they’re selling.

You might have the best product to aid in hair loss but no one will know about your life-changing product if you don’t market it effectively. If you haven’t caught on yet, your efforts to effectively market your product are detrimental to the success of your business. It not only gets your business out there to potential clients but it also makes them want to try out your product and see what it’s all about!

Why Marketing is So Important?

Marketing Enhances Your Company’s Reputation

When effective marketing efforts have been executed, your business’ brand name recognition will be enhanced greatly. You want current and potential customers to be able to recognize your product and associate it with high quality and excellent customer service, right? Of course you do. That’s why it’s important to listen to your customers and clients and communicate with them to make sure your branding efforts are being utilized effectively.

Everyone has their own opinion on brands that they consider as good quality and brands that are associated with bad quality, whether it’s on the customer service end or on the side of how a particular product is made. Take cars for example… Toyota has a better association with quality than Kia. Another example would be shopping. Amazon and Wish are great online shopping platforms that are very well-known but one sells products of higher quality while the other is on the lower end of quality… can you guess which one is which?

Marketing Lets the World Know Your Product Exists

Again, how can you sell your product if no one knows it even exists! Nothing is more important to the success of your business than getting the word out about it. You first want to make sure you create a credible website that customers will feel is safe to use and shop on. Once you’ve established that, people will continue to shop on your site, just based off of that!

Effective marketing will not only let current and potential clients know your business exists but it will also let your competitors know your business exists too! What good is business without the fun of competition! You can easily be successful in seeling something no one else does but how will you be able to know exactly how good your product is without it being compared to someone else?

With competitors, you’ll be able to know whether or not your product is good quality based on if it genuinely is a good product because you will have something else to compare it to. It’s almost like sports, you don’t want to compete against a team that’s nowhere near as good as your team… you want to compete against a team that is on the same playing level as you.

The Element of Web Design

Brand Name and Logo

When it comes to the success of your small business, your logo is one of the most important parts. Yes, the actual products and services are very important but it’s the brand name and logo that will stick in the minds of customers.

Choosing the right logo and brand name can be quite daunting for some business owners… it’s actually one of the hardest parts for some business owners! Forbes.com discusses the basics of web design and how the design of your brand name and logo projects the personality you want your business to have.

Usability and Load Times

According to marketingdive.com, 53% of mobile users will leave a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, based on a study by Google. Being that most people do all their shopping online and the majority of their online shopping is done via their mobile phones, usability and load time is very important.

It’s like you get one chance to make that impression on a customer and you don’t want to blow that chance by one, not making your website accessible across multiple devices, and two, you don’t want to blow that chance by your website taking too long to load. We’ve all seen that spinning wheel that drove everyone crazy… don’t let your site be that spinning wheel everyone hates!

Ease of Navigation

Have you ever been on a website and just found it hard to use because of how the navigation bar was set up? We’ve all been there. How did that site make you feel though? It was probably exhausting and it made you go to a different website that was much easier to navigate through, didn’t it? You’d be lying if you said it didn’t!

You saw how long customers will give a website to load… don’t you think they have that same mindset to leave a site if they can’t find what they’re looking for on a site? Absolutely! A customer will not spend too much time at all if they can’t find what they’re looking for within a few clicks or taps.

Font and Layout

When it comes to your website, you want to make sure your font is big enough for customers to see it without it being too overwhelming, and you also want to make sure that the layout of your website is not too cluttered. It’s just like a physical store.

When people go shopping, they want to walk through a clean store and easily see the products on display and where the sale signs are easy to read. It can be very overwhelming to walk into a clothing store and see clothes off the hanger and scattered everywhere… it just makes you not want to shop there. The same goes for your online store.

No one wants to hop on your website and see that your fonts are in different styles and sizes, nor do they want to see blurry photos of the products you’re selling. Stick to one-two different fonts and sizes and keep it consistent throughout your website. Take clear photos of your actual products and give detailed descriptions of each product. This will let customers see what they’re actually getting and will instill trust in your business.