The success and failure of any business depends, in large part, on the marketing strategies that it engages in. Marketing is one aspect of any business that should never be short changed. Have you ever wondered why do the big companies like McDonalds, Walmart, Coca Cola, and Pepsi even bother spending millions upon millions of dollars in advertising each and every year, when practically everyone across the country already recognizes these brands? Well, the question itself contains the answer! Practically everyone across the country already recognizes these brands because of the aggressive marketing strategies that these companies employ. So it’s like a “chicken and the egg” question. These companies industry giants and market leaders because of their heavy focus on marketing.

The lesson to be learned from these companies is that even in times of economic downturn, you should never relent on your marketing efforts. And even during times of economic prosperity, you should still never relent on your marketing efforts either. Why is this? It’s simple logic, actually:

Where does revenue for your business come from? From paying customers, right? Well, where do you get these paying customers from? They don’t obviously just show up out of thin air right? If you are selling a product or service that fulfills a need, and there are people out there who have that need that needs to be fulfilled, they will no doubt be searching for a company that can provide that product or service and thus fulfill that need.

But only a naive fool would assume that just by opening the doors to your business, customers would start flooding in, clamouring for your business. On the contrary, you have to get the word out about your business. But even still, it’s not enough to just advertise and say “hello world, I’m open for business”. The marketing strategies that you employ must be a lot more comprehensive than that:

Buying is oftentimes an emotional decision, so you need to appeal to peoples’ emotions. You need to be persuasive. You need to convince them that they need your product. And you need to convince them that without your product, that need in their lives will go unfulfilled.

This applies for both marketing strategies in the offline world as well as in the online world. This is true whether you are trying to advertise through print, television, or print, and it applies just as well if you are trying to advertise your business online through your website.

Of course, the mechanics of your marketing strategies will differ depending on which media venue you choose to devote your marketing efforts towards. But the fundamentals of marketing remain universally the same.

Marketing strategies on the Internet, for example, might involve search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to get your website ranked highly in the search engines for specific key words or phrases. It might also involve pay-per-click advertising.

Whatever the case may be, the marketing strategies that you choose to employ can quite literally make or break your business.