
How important is marketing for a small business?
The key to your business's success is held in its marketing! Almost all aspects of your business depend on successful marketing. The overall marketing scope covers advertising, public relations, promotions, and sales. In it’s most basic form, marketing is a process by which a product or service is introduced and promoted to your potential customers. Even if your business offers the best products or services in your industry none of your potential customers would know about it, without marketing. Without marketing, sales crash, revenue dries up and companies close.
Getting word out
For a business to succeed, the product or service it provides must be known to potential customers. You have to use marketing strategies to create product or service awareness.
Without marketing, your potential customers may never find out what your business offers and your business will miss the opportunity to prospect these customers and grow efficiently.
Using marketing to promote the product, the service and the company provides your business with a chance of being discovered by prospective customers.
Increased sales
Once your prospects are aware of your products or services, it dramatically increases your chances that consumers will make a purchase. As brand awareness becomes a reality, it is also the point where new customers start to spread the word, telling friends and family about this amazing new company they discovered. Your sales will steadily increase as the word spreads. Without employing marketing strategies, these sales may not ever happen; without sales, a company cannot be successful.
Company Reputation
The success of a company often rests on its reputation. Marketing builds brand name recognition or product recall with a company. When a company reaches the high expectations of the public, its reputation stands on more solid ground. As your reputation grows, the business expands and sales will naturally increase. The reputation of your company can be built through (i) active participation in community programs, (ii) effective communication--externally and externally--and (iii) quality products or services, which are created or supported by marketing efforts.
Healthy Competition
Marketing also nourishes an environment in the marketplace for healthy Competition. Effective marketing gets the word out on the pricing of products and services, which don't only reach the intended consumers but also reach other companies competing for the consumers’ business.
Rather than companies having a monopoly on products and services, marketing helps keep pricing competitive for businesses to try to win over consumers before the competition does. Without competition, well-known companies would continue to strive, while lesser-known companies would very stand little chance of becoming successful. Marketing encourages healthy competition that allows small businesses to be successful, to enter into and grow in the marketplace.

Considerations
Although marketing is hugely important for a business to succeed, it can also be very expensive. In its first year, a company might spend as much as half of its sales income on marketing. After the first year, a marketing budget can reach as much as 30 percent, if not more of the annual sales revenue. A marketing strategy that gives your company the best chance is a healthy mix of different forms of marketing, such as:
(i) fully branded mobile app
(ii) website development
(iii) enhanced seo
(iv) bespoke articles/blog posts
(v) social media management