10 Reasons Why Marketing Training for Small Business Owners is Essential

Adam Baetu — March 7, 2017 Follow @Marcomms4biz

It’s no secret, at the core of business success is marketing. For small businesses, marketing goods, services and their brand, is essential in reaching customers, selling products and services and generally staying afloat. Though as with any discipline, marketing is achieved more effectively when you have the knowledge and expertise about the most effective forms of advertising, promotion and public relations, hence why marketing training can prove invaluable for many marketing-naïve SMEs.

If you run a small business and your marketing efforts are either non-existent or aren’t getting you very far, it could be worth investing in marketing training. Take a look at the following 10 reasons why marketing training for small business owners is essential.

Open new doors

Being up-to-date with the latest trends, innovations, technology and developments in the world of marketing, can help open new doors for your business. You will be able to implement such innovations into your own marketing strategy, and by doing so, grow your businesses organically by reaching out to new and existing customers.

A better communicator

Good communication skills are vital in the cutthroat world of business. Marketing training can focus on how to communicate effectively, both orally, written and online. By equipping small business owners with better communication skills, the business will be in a better position to communicate more proficiently and ultimately succeed.

Compete with larger companies

Being better communicators and having knowledge about different elements of marketing, training gives small businesses the opportunity to compete with larger, more established companies, and compete with their share of the market.

Identify shifts in buying behaviour

Asides generally helping to increase company sales through greater and more targeted brand exposure, effective marketing can identify shifts in buying behaviour. What Forbes refers to as ‘sales enablement’, marketing can identify where a business is performing well in terms of sales and where it needs to make improvements.

Gain the marketing skills you require

Naturally, marketing covers a huge spectrum. Marketing training can cover a wide range of information, enabling small businesses to brush up on their basics. It can also focus on one particular area, tailored to your business’s own specific needs. For example, if your SME requires a social media marketing injection, the training could focus solely on social media marketing.

Keep your marketing efforts in-house

By investing in marketing training, whether it’s for yourself or for your employees, will ensure your company has the right knowledge in how to carry out an effective marketing campaign. Consequently, instead of recruiting a marketing company to implement and manage marketing strategies, you will be able to keep the campaign ‘in-house,’ thus saving your business money in the long-term.

Become more digitally savvy

We can’t ignore the stats, which state that in 2016, approximately two thirds of internet users in the European Union shopped online and the proportion of e-shoppers is growing.

With this in mind, businesses who aren’t appealing to digital consumers, by selling and marketing their goods via digital means, are missing out on a huge chunk of the market.

Effective marketing training informs businesses on how to be more successful in terms of selling their services and products online.

Sell to a global economy

As Entrepreneur writes, “even small businesses can sell to a global economy, if they have the right tools.”

The right tools include having knowledge about what is required from businesses to remain competitive within an increasingly digital corporate landscape. When a small business is equipped with the right knowledge, for example, how to reach out to a global audience through the likes of email marketing and social media, they have the potential to sell on a global scale.

A cost-effective investment

While marketing courses and training vary significantly in terms of cost, it is possible to have quality training for an extremely reasonable price. When you consider how much money having the right marketing tools and knowledge is likely to bring you in the long-term, marketing training is a sound and cost-effective investment that many small businesses simply can’t afford to ignore.

Increase company awareness, prestige and credibility

Effective marketing training will show you how to put your business on the pedestal it deserves. Not only will making your brand more visible help increase sales, but it will also ensure you are seen as a savvier marketer, increasing your business’s prestige and credibility.

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