The role marketing has to play

The role of marketing in society is to: Provide Goods and Services - The essence of a market involves the exchange of value in the form of goods, services, and information. Marketing makes people aware of those goods and services - whether those goods are a basic need or a personal want. It can be and is used by all businesses – all over the country as well as the world. It is also to some degree a wide and varied offering in terms of how it is able to be used as a means of business growth too.

As a managerial process, marketing is the way in which an organisation determines its best opportunities in the marketplace, given its objectives and resources. This is no longer just a service to be used by big blue chip businesses – start ups also can be of benefit from good marketing services too. The purpose of marketing is to connect the product and the customer by providing relevant information to them. Those in this position goal is to also make sure that it is your business seen in the first instance too. This is all the type of work taken care of from a marketing agency.

All businesses can be of added benefit from this service

Irrespective of whether you are a business owner or a working professional, there are several critical questions that you should be asking yourself. For example – Are you aware of the needs of your customers? Do you think customers trust your products? Have you observed any of the messages or posts that the customers make about your products and services? The one word that can answer all these questions is ‘marketing’.

The importance of marketing for your business is that it makes the customers aware of your products or services, engages them, and helps them make the buying decision. Furthermore, a marketing plan, a part of your business plan helps in creating and maintaining demand, relevance, reputation, competition, etc. Therefore, as marketing has a pivotal role to play in making your business a huge success, without understanding the importance of marketing, it may be a little difficult to manage and run a profitable business in today’s world. To understand the importance of marketing for your business and why it is needed, we need to first understand what marketing is.

You can be sure too of some great success

The success story of a business largely depends on the marketing strategy it deploys. An effective business marketing strategy helps in boosting growth as well as growing the number of consumers for a business. Some of the different marketing strategies include promotions and advertising, establishing media relations and other aspects. Even when a business provides the best products and services, it is important for people to know about it. This provides information to consumers and makes them aware. Another benefit of a marketing strategy is that it helps in building a company’s reputation thereby leading to better trust among its consumers.

Sustainability is now a key part of marketing too

The panellists universally echoed the necessity for sustainability practices in general. While this imperative for net-zero can be daunting, especially for SMEs with limited resources compared to big corporate entities, it is important that companies start the process, even if initial steps are small. Highlighting that journey reflects credibility, Pam Sheemar shared how the NatWest Group is encouraging new businesses to include sustainability targets in their strategic vision to be eligible for funding. Interestingly, 90% of NatWest's clients are SMEs and 70% of those are already taking actionable steps towards becoming net-zero.

CX is now also key

I can’t emphasize enough how vital it is for today’s businesses to put their customers at the heart of everything they do, not only for the success of their marketing strategy but also for the long-term success of their business as a whole. Today’s CMOs understand that having a customer-centric mindset and focusing on developing amazing customer experiences is the key to business growth.

The customer experience has always been important, of course. But in today’s increasingly digital world, the way that consumers research and choose which products to buy is changing. It’s not a case of advertising becoming less effective. But consumers are no longer passively relying on advertising and information from salespeople to inform them about products. Instead, they’re going out and doing their own research from a number of different sources – they’ll use social media, blogs, video reviews, and other online information to build up a picture of the products and services they’re considering buying.

They’ll also use the official information supplied on the brand website. Over 80% of smartphone users research information on their phones before making a purchase in-store, and the vast majority of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase either online or offline. In other words, it’s not enough to tell the world about how great you are anymore. You have to prove it. And this is only possible by providing truly great customer experiences. Almost 90% of companies are now competing primarily on the basis of customer experience, compared to only 36% in 2010. This puts CX above price and other traditionally critical factors.

Overall

Every person in your company has a part to play in creating a great customer experience and in the ultimate success of your marketing strategy. But it makes sense for the CMO to have overall responsibility for bringing together all these different departments and individuals with a common goal. 90% of organizations now view their CMO as a collaboration-leader who connects different departments. The role of the CMO is changing, and it’s no longer all about advertising and brand management. As the capacity of marketing is becoming broader, so must the tasks and priorities of chief marketers.

Going forwards on from this and from here too, companies must support their CMOs in having a significantly bigger influence on human resources, talent sourcing, and retention than they have had in the past. In order for every employee in a company to represent the brand values and company mission, they need to have a real connection with who and what they’re working for, and this means investing in employee engagement.