Marketing | Till It Clicks

Marketing: Your Business’ Engine That Requires Regular Maintenance

For any business today, having a well-thought marketing strategy is essential to achieve its desired growth goals on a regular basis. Without one, it can be difficult to stay on top of the ever-changing media landscape. However, a meaningful marketing strategy is not just about great ideas and practices but also about being consistent with marketing efforts.

Marketing is like your business’ engine. It needs constant checkups and servicing to keep running. In absence of these maintenance activities, the whole system can grind to a halt! Hence, marketing cannot be treated as a standalone, one-off activity. It should be an ongoing process that requires commitment and discipline over an extended period of time.

The key thing here though isn’t just making sure everything falls into place, it also needs strategic optimisations on top of this careful planning. This is because there will always be changes happening within today’s dynamic market environment. And when not managed properly, this could lead to severe disruptions in the marketing processes, and ultimately, in the business outcomes.

Short-termism in Marketing is Affecting Businesses

For any business today, having a well-thought marketing strategy is essential to achieve its desired growth goals on a regular basis. Without one, it can be difficult to stay on top of the ever-changing media landscape. However, a meaningful marketing strategy is not just about great ideas and practices but also about being consistent with marketing efforts.

Marketing is like your business’ engine. It needs constant checkups and servicing to keep running. In absence of these maintenance activities, the whole system can grind to a halt! Hence, marketing cannot be treated as a standalone, one-off activity. It should be an ongoing process that requires commitment and discipline over an extended period of time.

The key thing here though isn’t just making sure everything falls into place, it also needs strategic optimisations on top of this careful planning. This is because there will always be changes happening within today’s dynamic market environment. And when not managed properly, this could lead to severe disruptions in the marketing processes, and ultimately, in the business outcomes.

Lifecycle-Marketing-Model | Till It Clicks

Source: Smart Insights 

When it comes to marketing strategies, a large number of businesses today are focusing too much on metrics and expecting quick gains. Whether it be social media marketing, paid advertising, SEO, or any other aspect, organisations are expecting great returns within the first few months. However, this does not happen as marketing campaigns take time to drive desired results.

While this approach of marketing may signal growth in terms of numbers, it fails to persist in the long run. Ultimately, this can hamper your brand-building efforts and can also take a toll on your long-term business objectives. Hence, it is always advisable to rely on long-term marketing activities to achieve strong and sustainable growth for your business.

‘The Perfect Marketing Strategy’ is a Myth

Marketing-Life-Cycle | Till It Clicks

Source: Zoho

When implementing a marketing plan for your business, it is important to understand that no strategy is ever suited to drive positive outcomes repeatedly. Every marketing plan requires regular adjustments and tweaks in order to consistently meet business objectives for a long period. Relying on a single strategy can never create stability or a sense of predictability within the marketing department. 

With this short-term oriented approach, businesses and marketers concentrate their budgets only on on-demand generation and bottom-of-the-funnel campaigns. As a result, they fail to address one of the major marketing objectives of every business – customer retention. However, keeping your marketing strategy flexible and making constant optimisations could significantly outweigh the benefits of short-term tactics.

Why Marketing is Not a One-time Affair?

Marketing-Not-a-One-Time-Affair | Till It Clicks
  • Time – It is important to follow a single digital marketing strategy for at least a year before you start to see positive results.
  • Connections – Creating genuine connections and relationships with customers requires time. Trust cannot be built within just a few months.
  • Expansion – Short-termism compels you to target only your most likely buyers. This prevents you from extending the reach of your brand.
  • Customer Retention – While short-term strategies only focus on customer acquisition, employing the long-term approach can also help you to significantly improve customer retention rates.

To give your business the best chance of growing, it is thus important to stick with a single but flexible digital marketing strategy for an extended period of time. Only then can you start expecting returns from your marketing efforts. Instead of running behind quick gains with short-term tactics, focusing on long-term strategies can be useful for your business to get the best outcomes at every touchpoint. 

Sonic Branding | Brand Identity | Till It Clicks

Sonic Branding: A ‘Sound’ Strategy to Build Strong Brand Identity

Remember Airtel’s classic promotional jingle…
Britannia’s Ting Ting Ti Ting…
Ponds’s Googly woogly woosh…

These are not only just nostalgic melodies by brands but perfect examples of sonic signature, demonstrating the excellent use of sonic branding.

Branding plays an important role in today’s complex market for businesses, ideas and products. Your brand identity needs to be cohesive and consistent. A sonic branding strategy can help you achieve this goal. Sonic branding involves the use of music, sounds, or any audio to create a memorable brand identity. It’s an effective way to promote your business and establish a strong connection with your target audience.

Why is Sonic Branding Significant?

As audio becomes more important than brand content, it is crucial to keep an eye on the entire audience. Building an audio element to your brand is often an afterthought or even something that people don’t think about at all. I am sure you all are aware of how audio content is taking flight with the podcast marketing these days, and Spotify is of course leading the sector. There are many ways to strengthen your audience’s association with your brand. From marketing to Instagram/TikTok reels, your audio selection plays an important role in shaping your brand identity. So make sure you learn the basics before starting.

Sonic branding is still a relatively new concept and people are just starting to think about using music for the purpose of marketing. But for music to be recognized as a commodity, to be bought, it must be quite appealing. Music that doesn’t adhere to existing music business marketing frameworks and definitions isn’t marketable in the short term. Sounds like a marketing speak? That’s because it is! It’s marketing speak for you to be part of a dialogue and to be aware of how your sonic branding choices can change the perception of your business, positively or negatively.

What is Sonic Branding?

Sonic branding is a collection of audio touchpoints that convey the values and personality of your brands. With Sonic branding, your company’s unique soundscape can be used in various elements like the sonic logo, interactive voice messages (IVR), commercials, digital ads, videos and podcasts, and the sounds customers use when using your apps and websites. Sonic branding has three major components: music, voice and sound effects wherein music is the most demanding element because of its distinctiveness.

For example, the sound you hear when you turn on your computer, phone or Amazon’s Alexa that follows your commands in an acoustic signature. Sonic branding communicates emotions and feelings as opposed to images and texts. It conveys factual information through sound but is less sustainable than visual images. Think, for example, of the sound generated when you switch from Netflix to your TV, or when you receive a text.

How to Use Sonic Branding for Your Business?

When people get to know your brand through a specific sound or song, they associate those distinctive sounds with your organisation, product, or service. If played well, this strategy can make customers immediately think of the song or jingle when they think of your brand–or think of your brand when they hear the specific song or sound.

Music is directly related to emotions. Different types of sound represent different emotions. For example – drum rolls and trumpets usually denote heroism, tabla and sitar denote something Indian, djembe denotes something African, birds chirping denotes nature or morning time, strings can be used to represent both happiness and sadness.

The use of the right sound for your brand can help you communicate your brand message in a better and creative way.

As you all know, visual logos and branding programs are really iconic today. But audio brands are the future, they are likely to become iconic very soon. The shift has already begun. If you do not have an audio brand, now is the perfect time to get started. When done right, your efforts can provide rewards for years to come.

Here is a small fun activity for you –

CAN YOU MATCH THESE SONIC LOGOS TO THEIR BRANDS?

Take our quiz to find out whether you can recognize the brand based on its sonic logo.

By Kamlesh Biswas