7 Reasons Why Marketing Is An Investment And Not Expense

Created December 11, 2020

Look around you, and you will see many businesses that think of marketing as an expense. They create strategies that are short-term and incapable of getting the business’s long-term growth that they desire.

According to Peter Drucker, a business’s core aim is to build customers; thus, to achieve this, they rely on two functions marketing and innovation. Whether you believe it or not, this is the true definition of marketing. Undoubtedly, it is an investment rather than an expense as it yields profitable results.

Nowadays, companies are focusing on digital marketing, as it provides many ways to reach customers. And unless you benefit from most, if not all of them, you will not see the growth you expect from your business. That is because marketing is what helps you attract potential customers. It is what drives results; it is how you increase not only your visibility but also customer loyalty and more.

Like we said earlier, looking at marketing as an expense only leads to short-term sales. In a highly competitive industry, you do not have the luxury to ignore long-term benefits. If you want to see growth over a long period, you need to enhance your marketing strategies and think of it as an investment.

What does an investment in marketing entail? It could be updating your content on your website regularly; it could be customer testimonials (text or video). It could also be a series of educational blogs or webinars or devising a strategy for SEO, and everything in between.

To explain our point of view, let’s take one marketing component: SEO, and understand how it’s an investment, not an expenditure.

1. Improves Your Marketing ROI

When you invest in a digital marketing strategy, you expect to earn the highest amount of ROI that you can. If you invest in a smart and competitive SEO strategy, you can receive benefits that you didn’t think were possible. There are thousands of tools that you can use to devise the best SEO strategy, like SEMrush’s traffic checker, competitor analysis, etc. With a viable SEO strategy, you can improve your lead conversion rate by a whopping 13 percent more than traditional marketing means. Several businesses are already investing in SEO for this very reason. And they are already reaping the benefits. Ensure that you do the same to reach your industry’s pinnacle and leave your competitors behind.

For example, a successful marketing strategy for a medical business should focus on delivering care that stands out from the competition. Another smart move is hiring a Medical Marketing Agency which can target both current and prospective patients in order to increase brand awareness and highlight the unique value offered by the medical business. With a well-thought-out marketing strategy designed to engage current and potential patients, a medical business can achieve a clear competitive edge and see dramatic results over time.

2. SEO boosts your credibility

Another benefit of investing in SEO is that it builds your brand’s credibility among the target audience. Now, if you are only worried about the expense, you might not benefit from this. SEO has the power to put you on the first page of search engines that build trust in your brand. We all know that most users who access a search engine stick to the first page. They seek the most relevant results, and if your page is among the top, they will deem it a reliable website.

3. High-quality Website Traffic

You don’t only want traffic on your website; you want high-quality traffic. If you miss out on SEO, thinking it is merely an expense, you might not attain this benefit. SEO and other digital marketing tools are beneficial in targeting the right crowd. You could pay for a billboard and hope that the right customers see it and walk into your shop. But investing in SEO and other digital marketing strategies weed out the low-quality traffic and only attracts high-quality traffic.

4. Real-World Numbers

For any investment to be effective, you need to understand its impact. When you invest in SEO, you get to monitor all your traffic in real-time. It means you can find out all about your customers, how they behave on your website, the purchases that they make. Additionally, the time that they spend on a webpage and more. This real-world data helps you understand your marketing strategies and enables you to make well-informed decisions in the future.

5. Promote Your Company Every Day

When you are worried about expenses, you only invest in short-term and temporary marketing methods that only work for a little while. When you invest in SEO, you make your brand available to your customers all day, every time. Let’s face it, what good is your product or service if the users cannot find it at the right time. With SEO and other digital marketing means, you can promote your business 24/7 and reap the benefits.

6. Target Each Stage of the Sales Funnel

When you invest in SEO, you also reap the benefits of content marketing. It includes different content types meant to guide your customers through their sales journey and help them select your brand. You can use videos, images, textual content, and more. You can create content for every stage of the sales journey, from the funnel’s top to the end. That is why content marketing, which is a part of SEO marketing, has the power to bring 50% more leads than any traditional marketing method.

7. Increase Brand Awareness

When it comes to marketing, making a quick buck is never a good option. You need to invest in ways that can bring your brand to a multitude of audiences. You have to make sure that your brand is front and center in their minds. That is the only way you can successfully grow your business. If you invest in SEO, you can easily do that. If your brand continues to dominate the SERPs, it will create awareness for your brand, products, and services. Many companies think SEO is a costly expense and utilize it only a few times a year. This notion leads them to stagnant business; seeing SEO as an investment and realizing its potential for your business helps achieve profitability.

Conclusion

If your company aims to achieve a distinct image, you have to stop thinking of marketing as an expenditure. Once you do that, you can effectively plan your strategies better and optimize them for long-term results instead of temporary and short-term benefits. It doesn’t mean that you leave all the short-term methods behind. It just means that you create a balance so that you yield fruitful results.