Do You Market For Your Customers Or Yourself? What's The Difference & Why Does It Matter?

As a business owner, you're under constant pressure to make a profit. You want a steady flow of customers and you know that you can achieve this through marketing. However, when you're marketing, should you be doing it for yourself or for your customers? Well, to understand that you first need to know what marketing is supposed to accomplish.

What Is The Purpose Of Marketing?

Marketing is all about attracting new leads and customers. It's about encouraging sales and being found by potential customers. A few years ago, that meant ramming your business name and brand down everyone's throats whether they cared or not and hoping somebody shows interest. Now though, things are much easier for marketers and consumers alike.

With the rise of the internet and the success of search engines, finding what you want has never been easier. And for businesses, that means being found has never been easier. Instead of spending thousands of pounds on TV adverts, newspaper articles and flyers. Now all you need is a well-optimised website to gather leads.

What Makes A Website 'Well-Optimised'?

Well, that means your website is created and updated with the goal of reaching the top of Google in mind. However, not being the top result for just anything, you need to be the top result for the “long-tail” keywords that your clients are using to find help in your industry. That's how your marketing becomes successful.

What Makes Marketing Successful?

As stated above, marketing is about gaining new customers for your business but that doesn't mean your marketing should be for you. Marketing (successful marketing anyway) should be done for your customers. As much as we like to think, when we sell a customer a product we aren't the ones doing them a favour by allowing them to buy our product, they're doing us a favour by choosing our business over the many alternatives. They're giving us the chance to earn their custom and their money. And marketing, in its most basic form, is about earning that chance.

That's why what makes modern marketing successful is the earning of trust. By providing the best information to a client’s issues, you'll build up prestige and when the time comes to make a purchase, they come to you. Not because you're the cheapest or most local option, but because you earned their trust and custom prior to them knowing they'd need your service.

Inbound Marketing

The culmination of these marketing strategies and tactics comes in the form of inbound marketing. This is a form of marketing that completely revolves around providing your potential clients with useful, relevant, up to date advice in order to gain their trust and their eventual custom. It's not about getting an immediate sale, it's about ensuring that in the weeks or months to come, they turn to you for help. Developing a relationship with your potential clients is at the heart of inbound marketing.

The JDR Group are Inbound marketing experts that can help you turn your business into a lead generating machine using automation and Inbound strategies. Contact us today to begin your journey.