But when you consider the fact that most founders did not have a marketing background before they ventured into entrepreneurship, the reason why they hate marketing becomes clearer.
Most startups abhor marketing. The reason for this is seldom clear. Just like the popular saying that
“ignorance of the law is not an excuse”
So is true with your business marketing. The fact that you know little or nothing about marketing and advertising doesn’t mean that your business has to be bereft of advertising.
In this blog post, you will be exposed to the different types of advertising available for small businesses, and at the end of this piece, you should be able to make an informed decision on what type of advertising should work for your business. Let’s take a look at
What’s Marketing?
There are so many definitions of the term marketing.
But just so you don’t get lost in the sea of definitions out there, permit me to share with you the definition of marketing as explained by Allan Dib in his book The 1-page Marketing Plan.
According to Allan, if the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming To The Showground Saturday” that’s advertising.
If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion.
But if the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the local newspaper writes a story about it, that’s publicity.
And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, answer their questions and, ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales. And if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing.
So, marketing can easily be said to be the strategy you use for getting your ideal target market to know you, like you, and trust you enough to be a customer.
If you understood the above explanation for marketing, you’re better than most entrepreneurs out there who seem to confuse marketing with what you do when sales are down.
Now, there are different types of marketing available. However, I would like to laser focus on just the two predominant types of marketing:
- traditional marketing and
- digital marketing
Traditional Marketing
Some say it is the oldest type of marketing. Well, I would agree with that. Simply because most of our fathers used this type of marketing to grow their businesses.
Traditional marketing involves the use of offline media to reach their audience. Such offline media include:
- word of mouth
- billboards
- newspaper publications
- radio
- television
- direct mail
- flyers
Lots of businesses are still using traditional marketing because it seems easy to deploy and requires zero or no knowledge of technology.
More like an aim-and-shoot strategy in a shooting range. We will delve more into its advantages and disadvantages later down the line in this piece.
Digital Mamarketing
According to Mailchimp digital marketing is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the Internet and other forms of digital communication.
In simpler words, digital marketing is any form of marketing that occurs online with the help of mobile, laptop, internet, etc.
Having delved into the two predominant types of marketing, the question is
Who Needs Marketing?
Startups
In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. It’s no longer the guy who builds the best mouse trap that gets the sales and wins in the marketplace.
Technology has made it quite easy for anyone to copy your “mouse trap” and bring it to the market as quickly as you’ve launched yours!
The sleek advantage hitherto enjoyed by businesses who invented one widget or the other seems to be lost almost immediately in the marketplace, thanks to innovative technologies.
So, businesses that want to thrive in the market have to accept the fact that they need a way to stay ahead of the competition and serve their customers better.
Marketing provides just the right medium of communication for startups to reach their targeted customers and share their unique value propositions.
Already established businesses
Technology and innovations have changed the marketing landscape tremendously.
Before now, big brands flooded the market with mass-produced items.
Consumers had access to these mass-produced products and purchased them as often as needed because they were the ones in the market.
As such, the big brands enjoyed great market share just by dominating the supply chain.
Now, technology and innovations have opened the door to other competitors who can also quickly mass-produce widgets and flood the markets.
Thereby diminishing the advantage and market share these already established brands enjoyed early on.
The marketplace has become supercharged with products. For every widget in the market, you could find a hundred more like it all screaming to be taken off the shelves by consumers.
It becomes, imperative that both big brands and newly established businesses embrace a form of communication that ensures that the customers perceive their products and services as superior to their competitors.
And marketing provides just the right medium, whichever form is used, be it traditional or digital forms of marketing.
Organizations
Organizations such as Non-Governmental organizations (NGOs) also need marketing to get their philosophies and messages out to their target audience.
It’s not enough to just hope and pray that someone identifies with your organization and comes to support you.
Individuals
With the onset of digital marketing, it has become easier to market your brand.
Individuals can take advantage of creating a personal website, creating social media pages across various social media channels, and even blogging about their brands.
Politicians are one set of people who leverage marketing to sell their vision to the masses.
Marketing channels allow them to tailor their messages to the masses.
Now we have been able to establish that marketing is needed not only by businesses but by individuals and organizations as well.
Still, there is a bit of confusion as to which type of marketing will suit a startup.
Before we delve into that, let’s quickly look at
The Differences Between Traditional Marketing And Digital Marketing
Traditional marketing utilizes traditional media such as radio, television, newspapers, billboards, magazines, and other offline channels to promote goods and services
Digital marketing is a much more modern form of online marketing that uses digital platforms such as search engines, social media, blogging, and websites to promote a company’s products and services
Cost Effectiveness
Traditional marketing strategies are quite costly. In Nigeria, it costs between N100,000-N400,000 to set up a billboard depending on the state and location.
Running ads both on television and radio are equally expensive as you have to book for prime hours to air your ads-which can be quite pricey.
Publications in national newspapers are also expensive depending on your choice of newspaper, the type of ads, and the placement of your ad, which can be between N200,000-N1,000,000.
Compare these figures which are conservative at best, to the cost of running a social media ad.
You can start your ad on socials with a daily budget of N2000-N5000 for just one day or 30 days as you desire.
This gives room for most startups to leverage this medium of marketing to reach a broader audience with the minimum cost possible.
Contact
Traditional advertising is designed to be a one-way means of communication.
What this simply means is that once you have chosen any of the offline traditional means of marketing to read your audience.
Whatever messages you put out there can only be consumed by your audience and they can’t get back to you in real time.
Once you read an ad in the newspaper, you can’t reply to the advertiser via the newspaper unless the advertiser leaves a means to contact him/her.
Unlike digital marketing, both parties (the advertisers and the audience ) can communicate in real-time. Take e-mail marketing for example, once you send out marketing communications via e-mail.
The e-mail recipient can hit the “reply” button as quickly as he/she receives the message to communicate with the advertiser.
Trustworthy
A lot of people trusts traditional marketing being arguably the oldest form of marketing.
Most brands the older generations got to know and use were marketed via traditional marketing methods.
Which tends to lend credibility to traditional marketing. Compare this with digital marketing, which is quite young.
A lot of scammers are also advertising on socials.
Making bogus claims in the marketplace has created a lot of fear of links in the digital ecosystem.
Advertisers in the digital ecosystem need a lot of social proof before they can convince their target audience to engage with their ads or take the desired action.
The level of trustworthiness in digital marketing is mostly a function of the content and the channel’s dependability.
Engagement
Traditional marketing can only reach a limited number of people at a time and space.
Imagine a billboard on the expressway, how many people do you think would be exposed to that billboard?
And out of those so exposed, how many persons do you think will have the presence of mind to engage with the ad, let alone take the desired actions?
The same can not be said for digital marketing. Because of the medium of communication which often is on mobile phones, desktop computers, and laptops.
Marketing messages seem to drop into the laps of the targeted audience by default. And engage,ment with such messges is likely to occur.
Reach
Traditional marketing is most time static. It is usually restricted to certain geographical areas.
If you advertise on national radio, television, and or newspaper, at best, your marketing message would have a national appeal, and cannot be heard or seen by the international audience.
Your products and services would not be known outside the shores of your country if you used traditional marketing strategies to reach your audience.
But with digital marketing, your products and services can cross borders to international communities because of the connectedness of the digital ecosystem.
Nowadays, nearly everyone is hooked up to the internet via one device or the other.
As the online community increases, the marketing messages spread through digital marketing channels seem to reach a broader audience.
Just one marketing video on socials can crisscross the whole globe in seconds gathering unimaginable views on its way and giving your message wider appeal and reach.
Conversion
The ultimate goal of any advertising thrust is conversion. Whether you’re selling stuff or you’re trying to sell lifestyle modification.
The ultimate objective of your advertising effort is to get people to take action in your preferred direction.
With this goal in mind, it’s safe to say that traditional advertising does not give high conversion.
There are many reasons for this. One of which is the ability of the advert to effect an immediate action on the target customer.
For example, let’s say you see an advertisement for a desktop computer on a billboard as you drive home from work.
Will this advertisement cause you to whip out your wallet to go buy a desktop computer?
Are you persuaded enough just by the scarce content, and the limited advertising medium provided to the advertiser?
This and many other factors make traditional marketing methods yield low conversion to those that use it.
However, with digital marketing, The conversion is usually high.
This is due to the effective communication channels available to advertisers and marketers using the digital marketing platform.
With digital marketing, you can target specific audiences with your marketing messages.
If your messaging is right and appeals to them, you can have conversions on the go.
Those who don’t convert immediately can be followed up using digital marketing tools to eventually make them warm up to your over and convert.
Organic
Digital marketing can be said to be organic. This means others can share your advertisement to reach much more audiences than the initial target audience you selected.
Plus you can also make changes to your advertising message while using digital marketing to grow your business.
Traditional marketing is not organic, hardly anyone shares billboard images or newspapers.
Also once your advertising message has been published using the traditional marketing media, you can’t make any edits or change it.
Which Type Of Marketing Should A Startup Adopt?
Well, if you’re doing business outside of Nigeria. It is safe to say you can try your hands on traditional marketing.
Because you will have the benefits of having the full import of traditional marketing work for you.
You will not be hindered by such factors as poor power supply, which might prevent your target audience from seeing your ads either on radio or television.
However, if you’re a small business owner in Nigeria and want to compete with other established businesses in the marketplace.
It is only wise you choose digital marketing to market your products and services in the market.
Here’s why
You don’t have to break the bank before you set up your first marketing campaign.
Digital marketing allows you to choose your advertising budget as deep or shallow as your pocket is.
Also, with the epileptic power services in Nigeria, most people source or get their news from their smartphones and no longer through televisions and radios.
When was the last time you listened to the radio? How many persons in Nigeria right now own a radio set?
Digital marketing allows you to run your marketing campaigns on mobile thereby giving you access to over 120 million Nigerians who are connected to the internet.
This, my friend, is one medium you need to focus on for your marketing efforts in Nigeria.
Finally, because of the high conversion rates obtainable with digital marketing.
You stand a better chance of having a high return on investment with digital marketing.
Because you can effectively utilize your selling skills to persuade your target customers who you have access to, to become paying customers.
However, if you:
- are too busy to design your marketing campaigns or
- don’t understand how the various moving parts in digital marketing work
Don’t loose sleep over that, you can contact fixpreneur today to fix your marketing challenges and design marketing strategies that work for your business.