2015: Is Marketing Worth It? - Cheap TV Spots

    LOS ANGELES, CA, January 05, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Lately there has been a stampede of articles proclaiming marketing - and by association, advertising - as the last resort of losers.

Seriously?

Not surprisingly, this proclamation has mainly come from the self-styled "disruptors": technology bloggers whose own businesses rely on reader eyeballs to attract advertiser dollars. In their desire to come off as trendy, they often confuse marketing with advertising, giving a black eye to both of these very useful and indispensable business tools.

It's easy to confuse marketing and advertising, but foolish to try to build a business without them.

Marketing is planning the strategy to reach your intended market - product, promotion, distribution, and pricing. It is the strategic planning of what to sell, how to sell it, who is likely to buy, and how to make a profit. This encompasses everything from studying your customer to creating the logo, your slogan, and how you will distribute your product.

Advertising is one important component of the execution of the marketing plan. It is the tactical implementation of the marketing strategy in a clear message, and distributing that message to the desired customer through media (television, radio, print, online) to create awareness of your brand, and/or your product.

In other words, if you strategize to sell to new moms and then tweet new moms, you are advertising to new moms - whether you've paid for that message or not. Your decision to address new moms is a marketing strategy, and your action of sending tweets is advertising.

4 Steps to Making a Living With Your Business:

1. The first step in making your product popular enough to make you a living is creating a good product that people want. If you build it, they will come - only if they actually want your product. Your marketing strategy includes market research.

2. The next step is ensuring that your product has at least one edge over competitors - price, quality, features, or preferably, a combination of these. This is how you position your product in the marketplace.

3. Focus. Make up your mind who is most likely to buy, how your product will be distributed to customers, and what price is both appealing to customers and sufficient for you to make a profit. This is your target market strategy.

4. Then, make your entrance into the marketplace with economical advertising. Understand that the only thing that counts at the end of the day (or fiscal year) is sales. Your marketing becomes your message. Ask for the business.

Regardless of how friendly you are with your brand's "friends" online, you still have to explain your product or service to people who have (gasp) never heard of you, or (gasp, gasp) have forgotten about you. In other words, your business must advertise!

Advertising can give a giant boost to a good product - and while it can even help out with a fair product, it won't take the place of being a good businessperson and having a solid marketing strategy behind the ad message.

Effective television advertising isn't about being loud and obnoxious; in fact, an entertaining ad can often become an audience favorite - even go viral.

Reaching a big and well-selected audience has never been easier with television. Television audiences are relaxed, and in entertainment mode. Consumers report that they consider advertising a fair price to pay for the shows they enjoy. TV viewers are eating dinner, relaxing on the couch, taking in their favorite drama or sporting event. Despite some reports of a shift away from TV to online, most home online use is in conjunction with television - viewers searching for and buying products they see advertised on TV.

About CheapTVSpots.com:
We help small and new businesses prosper by telling their story on television. Going on 14 years in business, and with an A+ rating at the Better Business Bureau, Cheap TV Spots produces award-winning, value priced TV advertising for entrepreneurs, SMBs and start-ups just like yours, across the United States and worldwide.

CheapTVSpots.com is a service of Academy Leader, Inc. "Cheap TV Spots," the "Three Spots" logo, the phrase "Only Our Price is Cheap" and the slogan, "We help small companies look big - we save big companies big money" are trademarks of Academy Leader, Inc.

Academy Leader Inc. is a multi-faceted multi-national media company that spans motion pictures, television, publishing, radio, and new media. The agency has won over 200 national and international awards for its original television commercial productions, including 15 Telly Awards.

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