Why You Should Never Stop Marketing

Unfortunately, small to mid-sized businesses don’t have the kind of brand equity that huge companies do. For them, marketing is about survival.

It may be surprising to learn that 46% of U.S. small businesses still didn’t have a website in 2016. The two top reasons for abstaining were the costs of implementing a website and the fact that the owners didn’t think it would be relevant to their industry.

As marketers have learned over the past decade, having an inbound marketing strategy is essential in just about every industry, even in B2B industries. In fact, 94% of B2B buyers conduct some form of online research before they purchase a product.

You Need to Keep Your Business Alive

You should never stop marketing. Once you stop, your business will stop existing in the eyes of your potential customers. If you stop posting to social media, your customer base will stop engaging with you. When you stop producing blog content, your posts will become backlogged and they will stop showing up in search results.

If you don’t update your website about new innovations and other developments, you won’t inform your potential customers of what you’ve accomplished. The good news is, if you’ve never engaged in any concerted marketing effort or if your efforts have waned, the only way to go is up.

It’s best to think of marketing as a form of cultivation, not as a one-time fix to a particular problem. Marketing that is adaptive and ongoing will yield new batches of leads month after month. If you stop, you will eventually exhaust all the leads you’ve previously earned and be left with whatever customer relationships you’ve managed to sustain.

Businesses that never stop marketing experience a sort of forward momentum, like a train pulling itself faster along a track. Sometimes, a marketing campaign can take time to produce results, but once it gains some speed, the benefits are indispensable.

You Need to Give Your Business Some Space

Use marketing to keep customers coming in so you have some space to innovate and experiment with new ideas. When marketing stops, customer acquisition is halted in its tracks, along with new cash flow. Businesses go into crisis mode. Instead of investing time and money into new ways to delight their customers, they focus on maintaining that status quo and making ends meet.

Small to mid-sized businesses often turn to new marketing efforts once they realize that they aren’t earning new business. Suddenly, all of their efforts are devoted to obtaining new customers. There is also less discretion about which customers they do business with because every new customer is vital.

Never Stop Marketing

To maintain the health of your business, you should never stop marketing. Don’t just do it for your bottom line; do it for your sales team. Both consumers and B2B customers are doing product research online. They rely on search engines to obtain information before they make a purchasing decision.

In fact, 62% of buyers would rather consult a search engine to learn about a product than speak to a salesperson. When they do reach a sales team, 58% of buyers want to talk immediately about pricing.

Let your customers find you online and learn about what you have to offer. Never stop marketing with content, social media posts, email campaigns, and advertisements so your salespeople will always have fresh leads to follow. Sustain your marketing so you can close more sales, innovate, and keep growing your business.