Sales and marketing go hand in glove, but they are different disciplines.

‘Marketing’ is a word all business owners are familiar with. It’s one of the core elements of promoting your business and helping it grow. But marketing can also be a buzzword often used as an all-encompassing term for areas of business development that should be separate entities.

Understanding marketing and how its benefits give you an advantage over your biggest rivals is essential no matter what your company provides. Once you know how to build an effective marketing strategy, one that’s well-suited for you and your team, you can soar past your competitors.

What is Marketing?

If you look up the word ‘marketing’ in the Dictionary, you’ll learn that it’s ‘the activity or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.’

But that definition is only surface-deep, and you need a lot more than a single sentence to get your head around it.

Marketing isn’t just about selling; it’s not just about your brand. A company’s marketing is how they reach the right customers, the language and tone you use once you’ve identified them and then providing them with the exact product or service they need. This can be done in a number of ways, but first we need to explain…

The Different Types of Marketing

Marketing strategies can be split into two main types. First is your traditional or ‘offline’ marketing. This involves using physical and print media to promote your business, from flyers and posters to large-scale presentations and exhibition stands.

Previously, this was essential for any business as it was the only way to sell products aside from word of mouth and a few good reviews. This approach is still relevant and is still very beneficial for growth, but we now have many more tools in our marketing toolkit.

Digital marketing is big business. There are dozens of ways to promote your company digitally, and there is no limit to how you can use each of them.

Methods of Digital Marketing

The most common methods include:

  • Web Design
  • Social Media
  • Content Strategy
  • SEO and/or PPC
  • Influencer Marketing
  • Email
  • And more!

With so many options available, it’s hard to know what’s best for your business. We see many companies try to do a bit of everything, but when you don’t focus on each aspect of digital marketing enough, none of it gives you the boost you’re looking for.

The Importance of Clever Marketing

Having the right marketing strategy in place is more important than ever. Marketing agencies like ours are in high demand and under a lot of pressure to deliver the most effective strategies for our clients.

Marketing has always been a fluid industry. Something that works well for one quarter may be less effective during the next. This is one of the main reasons to bring in the professionals to help you with your marketing.

Trying to learn about marketing while also running your business has never been easy; now it’s tougher than ever. And there are some obvious traps that business owners fall into.

The most common mistake is thinking that marketing, both traditional and digital, is all visual. Your website may look excellent, and you might have the brightest prints to hand out at events, but looks aren’t everything. If your products aren’t being seen by the right people, or barely anyone at all, no redesign will be enough to catch their eye.

Getting the look, feel, functionality and messaging right is critical to optimise every opportunity. This is where SEO, PPC, and other digital marketing tools play their part. Well planned and well executed campaigns, that are monitored and measured against agreed goals, will help you hit your targets.

Creating the Perfect Marketing Strategy

As we mentioned, there are a lot of elements to a marketing strategy. Some need to be prioritised more than others, and a few can even be ignored completely if it’s appropriate.

Marketing is a delicate balance, and even one that’s working optimally shouldn’t be set in stone. Your customers’ tastes and preferences change all the time, so when you can predict these changes and adapt accordingly, you’ll always be ahead of the game.

There’s no ‘perfect’ strategy that you can copy. Every business is different, with a unique brand. This is regardless of your industry, and your demographics, although it’s worth keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing with their marketing to see if there is a niche you can capitalise on.

We specialize in creating bespoke marketing strategies for our clients. By taking the time to learn about you, your goals, and how you want to sell yourself to potential customers, we’ll ensure that the right messages are conveyed. And to keep you in the loop, we provide regular reports and updates regarding all the changes we make.

Because of the range of services we provide, we’ll never turn to you and say, ‘that’s not something we can do for you’. If there’s an element of marketing to be used, we are the best at using it.

Need a new website? We’ll design it. Worried your brand is outdated? We’ll modernise it. Want to invest more in your SEO? Leave it to us. Need new company pens? Say no more.

Our team contains some of the best marketing minds available, they’re ready and waiting to help you create the ideal marketing strategy for your business. So no matter what your business does, or how ambitious your goals are, we’ll help you succeed.

Is it time to review your marketing strategy?

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Digital

We have over 30 years of design experience and were early adopters of the web, so we know how to grab the attention of the viewer - whatever the target audience.

Strategic Marketing

At Williams&Crosby we believe that marketing is about delivering a sustainable competitive advantage for our clients.

Exhibitions & Events

If you are looking for an exhibition stand that will help you stand out and attract more interest we can provide a solution to meet your budget.

Design

Creativity and solution creation should never be about making pretty marks, it’s about the intelligence behind the marks. This is what distinguishes good from outstanding.