Invest in marketing for success in 2021

How can you expect to compete to acquire and retain customers if you don't invest in marketing?

As long as your business exists, investment in marketing is a vital contributor to your success. What are the upsides when you invest in marketing? Here are 5 reasons to increase investment in marketing today.

1. Invest in key marketing skills to optimize your marketing strategy

In today's competitive environment, you need to hone your marketing team's key skills to ensure you are working as efficiently and effectively as possible to reach and engage your customers and make money. But without the initial investment, this can be difficult to achieve.

In fact, 79% of CEOs listed availability of 'key skills' as one of their top 3 concerns.

Marketers need to approach 2021 confidently, planning a marketing strategy across the full marketing mix according to external threats and opportunities, not internal strengths.

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Select media investments

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BrightEdge's channel report found that 51% of all website traffic and 40% of revenue comes from organic traffic - outlining SEO as a key marketing skill that needs continued investment to keep up with the latest developments. Email marketing, king of ROI, generates returns 4x higher than any other digital channel - clearly investment in email will improve your bottom line.

Heading into 2021, investing in marketing means reaping the rewards of a planned approach to SEO, or essential email design elements. Smart Insights Learning Paths cover 10 areas of essential marketing skills to fine-tune your strategy.

2. Reach more customers through employee-customer success

Over the years, customer service has grown in importance. In fact, it's now a form of marketing. When you treat your customers well, they promote your company through word of mouth and you attract even more customers. This process begins with engaged employees equipped with the skills and tools to do the job at hand.

In a consumer-led world, where 75% of people don't accept advertisements as truth, it's vital to make the proper investments in customer success and have both your customers and employees on board to ensure your key brand messages are backed up by the most trusted voices. Invest in your employees to ensure your customer engagement is at the top of its game.

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When you invest in your employees, they will become more engaged and this translates to their interactions with your customers.

3. Invest in your marketing team to increase profitability across the board

Generally, employee engagement at workplaces is low. According to a Gallup study, only 36% of American employees are engaged in their work, and 14% are actively disengaged.

When there is low engagement in workplaces, the side effect is a loss of productivity and profitability, which hurts your business. However, your staff will become more engaged when you invest in marketing training and tools that help them do their work better.

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Ultimately, with the right investment, they start to see themselves as part of your company and are happy to do their jobs. For instance, a study by the Said Business School, University of Oxford and the British telecoms company BT found that happy workers are 13% more productive.

With this in mind, it is not surprising that Gallup's more recent study found work units in the top quartile in employee engagement outperformed bottom-quartile units by 23% in overall profitability.

4. Marketing investments to retain staff and save costs

Apart from increasing productivity, CPD (continuous professional development) creates an environment where your employees feel more committed to their work.

Investing in your employees, in turn, provokes loyalty from those employees. LinkedIn's latest Workplace Learning Report highlighted that, in 2019, 94% of employees would remain at a company longer if it invested in their development.

In addition to the commercial benefits of their training, increasing retention rates can help you save other costs too.

Apart from the monetary cost of finding a replacement, it can be difficult to integrate a new employee into your company. Likewise, it takes time before a new employee can get up to speed. All these can lead to even more costs for your business.

The PWC Workforce of the Future report highlights their findings that in 2020 37%
of employees are worried about automation putting jobs at risk - up from 33% in 2014. Yet 74%are ready to learn new skills or re-train to remain employable in the future. Take this process in-house with investment in upskilling and retaining your employees.

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5. Invest to attract top talent

To build a successful business, you need to hire the best talents. As your business grows, you'll need to expand and fill in more positions.

The good news is that you can attract great talents by investing in your current employees. When you do this, they become your business advocates for potential employees.

Furthermore, in a survey of millennials by PwC, 35% listed 'Excellent training/development programmes' as attractive to employees (third on the list), making investment in marketing training even more important for your current and future marketing teams.

Start investing in your business

Having explained the benefits of investing in marketing, what are some steps you can take to start investing?

• Employee training: training employees in general and professional skills will increase their capability to do a better job for your company.
• Provision of tools and software: your employees in various departments need tools and software to do their jobs more efficiently. You can take recommendations from them and provide these tools.
• Promoting innovative culture: many times, having a workplace environment where employees have the freedom to contribute can make a difference. It leads to better morale and products.

You can take these and more steps to start investing in marketing and reaping the rewards in 2021.

Conclusion

Investing in marketing is the best way to increase your chances of success. Because it results in better employees, products, and customer service.

In a nutshell, it's an all-round win for your business. So if you weren’t convinced why you need to consistently invest in marketing, these are 5 great reasons.