How to start business marketing?

Marketing is a key factor in acquiring new customers and the success of any business. Still, a common mistake of new entrepreneurs is to forget how important marketing is.

But how to start marketing? What does it all actually contain? Are marketing and advertising the same thing? Many may be thinking about exactly these questions when it's time to start the famous marketing of your own company.

In this blog post, we will not only discuss ways to advertise (which you probably already know), but we will introduce you more deeply to what marketing and advertising are and how they can be implemented effectively. We also consider whether the company's marketing should be done in-house or outsourced.

What exactly is company marketing?

The most important thing we want you to know is that marketing is not just advertising.

Marketing is the planning, implementation and analysis of measures and processes aimed at increasing sales. In order for a company to be successful, it must have a watertight marketing strategy, which is, in simplified terms, a plan to bring a product or service to market successfully.

Your marketing strategy, on the other hand, tells you how you intend to reach your potential customers and turn them into paying customers. This plan includes market research, product development, distribution, media planning, value proposition, brand message, target group, sales strategy, customer service, and finally, advertising.

Marketing is therefore a very broad and versatile entity, with the help of which your product or service is placed in the right light in terms of communication, and thus helps your potential customer to buy the product or service he needs.

The main differences between marketing and advertising

Although marketing and advertising are often confused, they are far from the same thing.

As we already explained above, marketing is a set of measures that help you put your product or service in the right light and convince your potential customers why they should choose your product. Advertising, on the other hand, is only part of marketing.

Advertising supports the company's marketing, and of course its purpose is to bring your product or service to the attention of potential customers. If you really want to advertise your product with good success, the company's marketing strategy should be fine-tuned before starting advertising.

In order for advertising to lead to effective sales, it must work well together with the other previously mentioned other parts of the marketing strategy. This is why it is especially important for an entrepreneur to understand how marketing and advertising differ from each other and how they affect each other.

Successful marketing is based on a good knowledge of the target audience

The basis of successful marketing is always defining the target audience and knowing it well.

Before implementing a marketing strategy and starting advertising, every company must define its target audience and get to know them inside out. If you don't know who you're trying to reach, the entire company's marketing becomes a blind hunt without guarantees of business growth and success.

In this case, implementing cost-effective advertising is almost impossible.

Your target audience includes the people 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 factors. Accurately knowing your target audience makes your company's communication clear and helps you talk to exactly those people who are interested in buying from you.

In addition to knowing your target audience exactly, your communication should be different depending on the stage of the buying path your customers are at (awareness, interest, purchase decision or recommendation). In successful advertising, people at different stages are therefore addressed differently.

That's why you should know how your target audience thinks at any given time and make sure that the advertising is implemented at the right time.

Branding serves as the basis of the company's marketing

In addition to knowing your target group, branding is one of the most critical aspects of marketing, as your brand is what sets you apart from your competitors, creates added value for your product or service, and appeals to your target audience. If you really want to succeed, you should create a strong brand right from the start, on which the company's marketing is built.

Branding has many dimensions, the best known of which is probably logo design. A well-designed logo helps the company to be recognizable and memorable.

However, there is much more to branding than just a logo, such as the visual appearance of the entire brand and the brand strategy, which help to make your company consistent. A consistent, strong brand differentiates you from other players in the industry and helps make your company valuable, reliable and well-known. With branding, you also create the image of your company that you want to market to others.

So before you start promoting your product or service, you need to know how you are going to make your company, your brand and your marketing materials consistent. The website, social media profiles, emails, business cards and product packaging should all be united by a coherent look and feel.

Since successful branding requires strong expertise in everything between marketing, graphic design and corporate communications, in most cases it may make more sense to leave brand design to the professionals.

If you need help in creating a striking brand, you can familiarize yourself with the brand design we offer here .

Digital marketing is also different from digital advertising

Digital marketing is also confused with digital advertising, but they are also different.

For example, automating the purchase processes of an online store and installing a chat bot are digital marketing, while digital advertising is communication that aims to get the attention of the target audience and arouse interest.

In order to succeed, digital marketing and advertising both require, in addition to technical know-how, a deep understanding of both marketing and customer behavior. To guarantee results, it is important to create marketing and advertising strategies that are always tailored to your company, your goals and your target audience.

Before starting digital marketing or advertising, you should have a company marketing strategy, a strong brand and a website that puts your product or service in the right light. This way, you can make all areas of the company work together seamlessly and you won't be left licking your fingers 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 many people are brought there with advertisements or other means.

That's why we often have to tell our clients that we can't do effective marketing until their website is renewed to the point where it effectively drives sales goals."

Only when your website and other parts of the company work together to promote sales, will you be able to implement truly cost-effective digital marketing or advertising that appeals to your potential customers.

Where should you start with digital marketing or advertising?

Let's say that the foundation of the business is in order at this point, and you are finally going to start growing your business through digital marketing and advertising.

At the very beginning, you should set clear goals for digital marketing and advertising that are connected to the goals of your broader marketing strategy. Good, typical goals are, for example, an immediate increase in leads and sales or an increase in awareness and the creation of a brand image, thereby growing the company in the longer term.

When thinking about the first steps in digital marketing or advertising, often the best place to start is where you know your target audience will be comfortable. Especially at the beginning of the activity, you don't need to be as active as possible in every place, but it would be more important to test different methods and find the most profitable channels for you.

Effective means of digital marketing and advertising are, for example:

• Advertising in digital channels

• Producing organic social media content

• Email marketing

• Writing a blog

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Conversion optimization

Advertising (Instagram, Facebook and Google advertising)

Instagram, Facebook and Google advertising is a great way to start marketing your company, because through these channels you can increase sales regardless of the size of your company.

Paid advertising is a big part of the marketing of several companies, because the ads can be targeted to those people who are already interested in the company. The ads in question reach the right people quickly, which makes paid advertising particularly effective.

Although recent changes in data protection have reduced the options for targeting paid advertising, when done right the results are still great. Excellent results are achieved by producing high-quality advertisements that interest the target audience, whose images and texts stop the viewer.

If you want to gain more exposure and social media followers, the best way to achieve that goal is through Facebook and Instagram ads. You can also get more visibility with Google's Display ads, i.e. banner ads. In this case, your ads will appear on, for example, 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 keyword advertising. With keyword advertising, you get more visibility in search engine results when people search for the products or services you offer online.

The downside of paid advertising is that success 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 the results, check out our Instagram, Facebook and Google advertising.

Producing organic social media content

In organic content production, no money is spent on advertising, i.e. all visibility on social media is acquired through natural means. This marketing method may suit you, for example, when you want to share valuable content, tell about your product or service and interact with your followers, but you don't have enough resources for advertising.

Although growing social media organically requires a lot of work, it usually also produces rather slow results. Therefore, to achieve the best results, most companies implement advertising and produce organic content at the same time, which is often the best strategy on social media.

If your goal is to get more real web traffic, leads and sales instead of followers in a quick time frame, it may make sense for you to turn to the hybrid model and advertising.

Email marketing

Email marketing is an excellent way to keep in touch with your target audience and keep your customers up to date with your company's activities. You can use e-mail for, among other things, promoting new products, announcing offers or simply sharing valuable content.

Email marketing has long been one of the most effective marketing methods due to its high return rate and low or even no costs. With the help of e-mail, you can address directly those people who are already interested in your offer - they wanted to join your e-mail list.

Since creating an email list is usually free, you should start growing it as early as possible. The fastest way to grow your list is to offer a free opt-in gift that benefits your target audience on your website, landing page, or blog.

When you get an expanded email list, you can keep your target audience up to date about your products or services and you can introduce both old and new customers to current offers. At the same time, you can encourage the reader of the message 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 can do many things, because with it you can build your brand, increase your recognition as an expert in the field, improve your site's search engine ranking and even increase your sales.

Before you start planning the content of your blog, you should clearly define its goal or goals. By writing a blog, you can cleverly share your thoughts and views 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 inviting readers to go to your product pages or join your email list.

Since Google rewards websites that publish fresh and SEO-optimized content on a regular basis, producing quality blog posts can help improve your search engine rankings. For this reason, more and more companies spend their time writing and maintaining a blog.

Writing a blog is a particularly good marketing tool for your company when you want your site to appear higher in the search results and you want to get more visitors there.

If your own time is not enough to maintain a successful blog, take a look at the content production services we offer 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 the visibility of your website and get more visitors there quickly and in the long term.

By optimizing your website for search engines, you can improve your ranking on the search engine results pages and thus increase the number of visitors to your site significantly. Since more and more potential customers get lost on your site, Search Engine Optimization increases the sales of your website and the income of your company.

Search engine optimization includes internal, external and technical search engine optimization of the website. If you are not familiar with SEO, you can learn its basics with the help of e.g. online courses, which will definitely get you started. However, learning each different aspect of search engine optimization takes some time and effort.

In addition to the above, you may lose a large slice of your money if the optimization is not done correctly. That's why we recommend working with a reputable marketing agency, so you can make sure your website is optimized correctly and you get the most out of it.

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 the website, i.e. mostly sales. It's a multi-step process designed to ensure that your site converts visitors into paying customers as efficiently as possible.

In its simplest terms, a conversion is any action you would like a website visitor to take. In addition to making a purchase, the desired conversion can be, for example, filling in and sending a quote request form, subscribing to e-mail messages or, for example, clicking a link.

The content of conversion optimization depends entirely on the situation of your website, but practically during it all obstacles to buying are removed. Optimization can include, for example, developing a sales funnel and customizing the purchase process, as well as editing the site's content, speed optimization and ensuring mobile friendliness.

If you want to do business online successfully, it's critical to make sure your website is optimized for conversions. If technology is not your field, we recommend leaving this part of the company's marketing to the professionals.

If your site has a lot of visitors, but the store is not busy, take a look at the conversion optimization we offer here.

Starting your company's marketing and advertising - what should you remember?

It is good for a new entrepreneur to remember that the marketing of a company is a multidimensional entity that includes much more than just advertising. If you really want to do business online successfully, you should fine-tune your marketing strategy before starting digital marketing or advertising.

In addition, you need to know your target audience like the back of your hand and your company should have a strong brand that serves as the basis of your business operations. Your website must also be strategic in such a way that it makes your product or service speak to customers.

Since the marketing strategy is always tailored according to the company's operations, goals and target group, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. A good marketing agency knows how to create a marketing strategy for your company or unify its existing parts, which gives you a competitive advantage and a solid foundation for your growth.

Only when all the mentioned areas of marketing are in order, paid advertising, organic social media marketing, email marketing, writing a blog, Search Engine Optimization and conversion optimization are excellent ways to increase your company's visibility, reach potential customers and increase sales, depending on your target group.

Outsourcing the company's marketing and advertising vs. doing it yourself

Now that you know what the company's marketing entails, you might think about outsourcing it in whole or in part.

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 stopped or you don't have the time or resources to implement professional marketing.

If you decide to implement part of the marketing yourself, for example digital advertising, you can get started with the help of different information sources. However, learning can take a long time or even a second, and a large amount of money can be wasted if all the steps are not done correctly the first, second or tenth time.

Since marketing is a rapidly changing field, you should also accept that, in addition to the basics, you will have to constantly learn new things throughout your business activities.

It's also worth remembering that if you don't have a broader marketing strategy, your company's foundation isn't in order, or your website isn't designed to promote sales, no amount of ads or side visitors will speed up your customer acquisition.

How to find a suitable marketing agency?

A good way to find the right marketing agency for you is to first read reviews and discuss your needs with the agency. This helps the company better understand your business and goals.

When you are in contact with the industry, you should ask whether the marketing agency helps in creating a comprehensive marketing strategy and implementing sustainable marketing, or whether the agency only offers advertising that is separate from other activities, which is not the key to success - on the contrary.

"Our customers choose us because Growly invests in comprehensive marketing, where every part of the company is polished to play seamlessly together, supports each other and pushes each other forward. This way we achieve sustainable business growth and not just quick quick profits."

We can also state that outsourcing marketing is worthwhile whenever you suspect that your expertise is not enough to create and implement a comprehensive marketing strategy.