Building a business from the ground up isn’t easy, and it’s easy to overlook a marketing department on your way to the top. But once you hit a plateau, that missing component might be holding you back. From better strategy to better branding and larger audiences, learn what you’re missing out on with no marketing department—and how a marketing partnership might be the perfect turnkey solution to rapidly expanding your industry presence.

Wasting One or More of Your Valuable Resources

Without a dedicated marketing department, those duties get spread out among staff—be it an owner or executive, the sales team, or the most junior member of your team in addition to their duties. This takes up their valuable resources: their time completing the tasks, their budgeted money in paying for services, and their expertise in learning new skills. Suppose you’ve got multiple people wearing various marketing hats. In that case, it takes an even more significant toll on productivity, as they’re working at cross purposes and without a real marketing strategy in place. Having a marketing department both frees up your staff and solves the issues of expertise and time.

No Control Over Online Brand & Reputation

Even if you don’t do a single thing online, you’ve already got an online presence—you just don’t control it. Whether it’s the basics of your location on Google Listings or reputation management on review sites, it’s all being created by bots and users on a regular basis. If you don’t claim these spaces to manage yourself, it will affect your brand’s online image in some major ways:

• Listing and Reputation Sites: If you have a well-established business, chances are there are online listings and reviews about you. Does anyone at your company review the reviews? Starting with Yelp and moving on to more specialized review and business listing sites, it’s important to claim, manage, and respond to reviews on all these sites.
• Google Search & Business: What comes up when someone Google’s your business? Every part of Google’s search results, from Google Maps to Your Business Listing, can be claimed and managed. Good SEO can also make the search results you want—rather than your competitors or other third-party sites—pop up.
• Social Media Platforms: People talk—and they talk a lot online on social media. On Facebook to what everyone still calls Twitter, people will talk about your brand, company, and staff. Being on (or better yet: active on) those platforms allows them to send traffic your way and helps you better manage your reputation if it’s negative feedback.

Missed Sales Opportunities with Larger Audiences

One of the biggest pain points we go over with business leaders when discussing marketing and business strategy is the need to expand their lead generation. Alongside PR, retaining and expanding your customer base is key to marketing strategy. While sales can painstakingly find and close new leads, marketing generates leads actively and passively when done right. With the right marketing team, you have so many tools to expand the audiences who see your company.

Along with taking your marketing online is taking your marketing team online by working with Vision Advertising as your marketing partner. From setting up your digital marketing basics to full brand reputation management, see what going from no marketing department to a complete one at your fingertips can do for your business. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you overcome your business’s biggest challenges.