Marketing Practices for Businesses

Sept. 5, 2014

In our current environment we are hit at every angle with marketing and advertising.  Every company is looking for that outside-the-box approach to reach current and prospective clients. Then there are other companies that are coming up with products to help you avoid such advertisements. I am sure most of us have a DVR or TiVo and know exactly what I am talking about.

So then the real questions become: how do I effectively market my product or service?  How does one gauge if it is working? What are the expected returns on investment when it comes to advertising?

To really start at the basics, here are the definitions of marketing and advertising. Marketing is the “total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.” Advertising, meanwhile, is “the act or practice of calling public attention to one's product, service, need, etc., especially by paid announcements in newspapers and magazines, over radio or television, on billboards, etc.: to get more customers by advertising.”

So what does this mean?  Marketing is the overall process of supplying a product or service to a customer. Advertising is a part of that, serving a singular purpose of drawing more attention to a product or service.

They represent vital functions to a business. When I first started with Ground Support Worldwide, one of my favorite responses that I would get from clients was, “I don’t want/have to advertise. I have more work than I know what to do with.” I never really understood this answer. Being in sales for over a decade now, I have never turned down an opportunity or the potential to make more money. 

As a consumer we all see advertising and marketing on a regular basis. How many times after seeing an ad does it take you to remember it or care that you saw it at all? In our own businesses, we market ourselves everyday.  The logo is the brand, and it’s put on everything to reiterate what and who the particular brand is.

There are many different ways to reach an audience or market.  The options seem almost endless and somewhat confusing at first glance: print/magazine, digital/online, social media, expo/conference, video, direct mail, email, and text-message advertising. These are just a handful of advertising options that are available.

In the next coming issues I want to dig into these specific forms of advertising and marketing.  I welcome any questions or comments on specifics that you would like to hear more about.