Common Misunderstandings Businesses Have About Marketing

Especially for new businesses, the concept of marketing can be pretty foreign. You’re a business because you can effectively deliver a product or service to customers, after all, not because you love to talk about yourself. Figuring out how to market effectively is a big challenge, especially if you’re just breaking into it. Avoid these common misunderstandings, however, and you’ll be well on your way!

You Can Cut Corners

Marketing takes a lot of time and work, not to mention know-how. Some may think, especially as they break into the strategies needed to make a name for themselves, that cutting corners will get them results faster with less effort. Some of the worst blackhat marketing techniques include keyword stuffing, duplicating content, copying content from other blogs, or social media manipulation. All of these and more may seem tempting, until suddenly Google bans your business website entirely from its search engine and you get a bad reputation from customers.

Confusing Marketing and Advertising

You want to tell people to buy your stuff, right? But designing an ad is simply not the same as developing marketing techniques. Anyone can make a decent advertisement and pay money for it to be seen, but marketing involves more research and analysis than advertising for a reason. Instead of aiming in the dark, marketing gives you insight on what kinds of advertisements will actually appeal to the people who actually would buy your product. Though the two are intrinsically related, marketing is about targeting correctly and reaping the most benefits from the least amount of time and cost.

Marketing is a Waste of Money

Sure, there are lots of good places to invest your money to increase revenue—but if your marketing isn’t doing that, it’s only because you’re not doing good marketing. Marketing is the mode of communication to let people know what your service or product is about, so how will your business grow and gain more customers unless you invest in it? Marketing also can see a very quick return if done correctly, so if your methods simply aren’t working it might be time to invest just a bit more, like hiring a marketing professional to teach you or your current marketing manager best practices.

Marketing may seem like a foreign concept at first, but it’s the bread and butter of business. Once you put aside your misunderstandings, you’ve cleared the way to the most effective tool you have in growing a business. Start investing in it and you’ll quickly see revenue increase!

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