Pros and Cons of Marketing

Many of my friends and relatives can attest to this fact: I hate making decisions…especially the difficult kind. Who does, though? Really? To cope with this hatred, I have been known to make many a “pros and cons” list – from my college choice to who I’d be taking to prom…yes, even the petty things got a list. 🙂 I’ve talked to many small business owners since starting Lindsay Plathe Marketing Consulting in September, and I still find it difficult to explain to them what marketing will do for their business. I have a degree in Marketing, so it was never really a question of whether it was important. Ha! But now, as a business owner, myself, I have a better understanding of how to make smart decisions in business. With that said, I decided to share with all of you a page from my “pros and cons” book (yup, the collection of them all is the size of a book…don’t judge me).

Advantages

Disadvantages

Promotion of your business

The most obvious advantage and reason any business markets is to get the recognition and attention of its target market.

Cost

Some marketing mediums are very costly – putting an ad in the newspaper or a commercial on TV is simply out of the price range for many small businesses. The good news is that with the proper research to back it up, you can keep your marketing costs to a minimum! For example, the Internet is a highly inexpensive way to promote a business. Advertising and marketing costs money.

Enhanced brand recognition

This is the point I was trying to get across in my post “A search for my fellow marketing nerds“. Over time, people begin to associate your logo with your business and all that comes along with it (i.e. customer service, product quality, timeliness, etc).

Investment of time

Researching the right marketing strategy, designing and writing, and tracking how successful your marketing is are only a few things involved in proper promotion of your business. By doing marketing yourself, you run the risk of waiting time on an unsuccessful campaign, and let’s be honest, our time is valuable.

Improves the businesses profits

(aka: you make more $$$)

Every business needs to spend money to make money, and investing in marketing will do just that if done correctly.

Ongoing

Research shows that people have to see a piece of information between 3 and 30 times before it sinks in. So clearly a disadvantage of marketing is the fact that your marketing campaign needs to be ongoing and consistent which increases the time and money spent on it.

I can say that this method of weighing my decisions has been successful for me in the past…I mean, prom was a blast 🙂 Let’s take a look…(just for kicks and giggles)

What are you doing for your marketing strategy? Do you have a plan for 2013? Weigh out the pros and cons of having some solid marketing behind your business, and let’s make it one successful year!