Marketing

 

Dictionary.com defines marketing as, "the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising."

 

Marketing refers to all activities a company does to promote and sell products or services to consumers. Marketing makes use of the "marketing mix," also known as the four Ps—product, price, place, and promotion.

 

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. 

 

The purpose of marketing is to research and analyze your consumers all the time, conduct focus groups, send out surveys, study online shopping habits, and ask one underlying question: "Where, when, and how does our consumer want to communicate with our business?"

  

 

 

Purpose of Marketing

Marketing is the process of getting people interested in your company's product or service. This happens through market research, analysis, and understanding your ideal customer's interests. Marketing pertains to all aspects of a business, including product development, distribution methods, sales, and advertising.

 

Modern marketing began in the 1950s when people started to use more than just print media to endorse a product. As TV -- and soon, the internet -- entered households, marketers could conduct entire campaigns across multiple platforms. And as you might expect, over the last 70 years, marketers have become increasingly important to fine-tuning how a business sells a product to consumers to optimize success.

 

In fact, the fundamental purpose of marketing is to attract consumers to your brand through messaging. Ideally, that messaging will helpful and educational to your target audience so you can convert consumers into leads.

 

  

Types of Marketing

Where your marketing campaigns live depends entirely on where your customers spend their time. It's up to you to conduct market research that determines which types of marketing -- and which mix of tools within each type -- is best for building your brand. Here are several types of marketing that are relevant today, some of which have stood the test of time:

 

Internet marketing: Inspired by an Excedrin product campaign that took place online, the very idea of having a presence on the internet for business reasons is a type of marketing in and of itself.

Search engine optimization: Abbreviated "SEO," this is the process of optimizing content on a website so that it appears in search engine results. It's used by marketers to attract people who perform searches that imply they're interested in learning about a particular industry.

Blog marketing: Blogs are no longer exclusive to the individual writer. Brands now publish blogs to write about their industry and nurture the interest of potential customers who browse the internet for information.

Social media marketing: Businesses can use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and similar social networks to create impressions on their audience over time.

Print marketing: As newspapers and magazines get better at understanding who subscribes to their print material, businesses continue to sponsor articles, photography, and similar content in the publications their customers are reading.

Search engine marketing: This type of marketing is a bit different than SEO, which is described above. Businesses can now pay a search engine to place links on pages of its index that get high exposure to their audience. (It's a concept called "pay-per-click" -- I'll show you an example of this in the next section).

Video marketing: While there were once just commercials, marketers now put money into creating and publishing all kinds of videos that entertain and educate their core customers.

 

 

 

How Marketing Works for Small Businesses

According to studies, nearly 90% of small businesses invest in marketing. Marketing is an excellent tool for increasing awareness of your products as well as establishing yourself as a reliable and reputable brand in your chosen niche.

 

If you want to jump on the marketing train with your small business, a good first step is to consider the four Ps of marketing. These include:

 

Product. What are you offering? It can be a physical product, digital item, service, event or experience. Curate the key features of your product and define what makes it unique in your market.

Price. What are you charging for your product? Calculate this by determining your net cost of goods and then adding on an additional amount to meet your desired profit margin.

Place. Where do you sell your goods? For example, you may have a brick-and-mortar store or an e-commerce platform. Where you sell determines where and how you market your product.

Promotion. How do you get the word out about your products? This is usually a mix of various marketing strategies, including paid advertising, content marketing, social media marketing and more.

With these four principles in mind, you will find it easier to decide on a solid marketing strategy.

 

Marketing Strategies

There is a huge variety of marketing strategies available to small businesses. Generally, most businesses use a mix of traditional and digital marketing tools to help reach as many people as possible. Take a look at some of these popular ideas to see if any would work for your budding company.

 

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an incredibly popular approach, with 90% of companies ranking it as important to their overall success. And we can see why, as companies earn $42 for every dollar they spend on email marketing. 

Email marketing involves collecting interested consumers’ emails and then sending them informative updates about your products and company. Some email campaigns function as lead nurturing tools that build interest in your products over time, while others can include promotions, seasonal deals or even newsletter updates.

 

 

 

Direct Mail

If you’re wary of relying too heavily on digital marketing, consider direct mail. It involves sending promotional materials such as postcards, brochures or flyers to potential customers you’ve identified through market research. For example, they might live in your store’s neighborhood, or they might have abandoned their shopping cart on your website. 

Direct mail is one of the most profitable forms of traditional marketing, with a 29% return on investment. It’s particularly fruitful if you want to market to the Baby Boomer generation, as 31% prefer direct mail over other marketing channels.

 

Social Media Marketing

Research estimates that 92% of businesses use social media for marketing. Social media marketing is so popular because, for the most part, it’s free to create an account and post content about your brand. And best of all, each social media channel can help you tailor to a specific audience.

 

For example, Facebook is excellent for targeting the Baby Boomer generation, while YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are all better for reaching younger users. You can use a mix of photos, videos, links and long-form content to engage and delight your followers.

 

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the process of creating blogs, white papers, videos, infographics and other forms of media to attract customers. It often goes hand in hand with SEO marketing, which attempts to optimize pages so that they rank higher in search results.

 

 

Paid Ads

Any time you pay to have your content shared with users, it’s considered a paid ad. Paid advertisements can come in a lot of different forms.

 

For example, you may pay a podcast to do an ad read about your company at the end of the show. Or, you might use pay-per-click advertising to get search engines such as Google to display your website at the top of relevant search results.

 

Paid advertising has a lot of purposes, but 33% of marketers use it to boost brand awareness. When paid ads are done right, you can reach relevant audiences who are more likely to benefit from your products.

 

Benefits of Marketing

By now, we’ve showcased some of the benefits of marketing. But here’s a more thorough list of just how investing in marketing can help your small business:

 

Increases your sales. It’s hard to say exactly how much marketing will improve your sales. But putting your products in front of your target audience is very likely to boost your purchase rate.

Curates a stellar reputation. If your company becomes known for having excellent customer service (not to mention a dash of cunning) on social media, it can help unaware consumers see your brand as more reputable.

Builds brand awareness. It takes five to seven impressions for someone to remember a brand. Getting your brand in front of people via advertising can help your company stay front of mind when it’s time to make a purchase.

Helps you educate customers. In a lot of cases, customers don’t know they need your product or service because they’re in the dark about certain facts or issues. Using marketing as a tool to educate helps customers learn more about how your product can help improve their lives.

Gives you room to grow. The more your brand gets out there and the more customers you get, the bigger your business will become. If all goes well, you might graduate from small business to big business.

Marketing Best Practices

After you’ve chosen your marketing strategy, you’re almost ready to get started with your first campaign. But before you dive in head first, consider some of these marketing best practices. They’ll help you stay on track and avoid crucial mistakes as you work to spread the word about your company.

 

Define your goals. Before you start any campaign, think about what you want to get out of it. Increased sales? More page views? More email newsletter sign-ups? Establishing a goal helps you better measure the efficacy and ROI of your campaign—and it’ll help you know what you can improve on next time.

Define and study your target demographics. Think about who would benefit most from your products. You might even be able to gather this data from your existing sales database. It may help to create a customer profile for each segment of your target audience and use that when crafting content for your campaigns.

Plan out your campaign. Always create a guideline to follow throughout the campaign and make sure you have all of the assets you’ll need ready to go.

Start soft, then follow up. This delves into inbound marketing, which is an approach where you create curated content for the user rather than generic ads catering to the general public. Lure in potential customers with interesting content that’s not necessarily sales-y. Then, as the consumer progresses through the funnel, get more aggressive with your calls to action.

Offer a discount or coupon. Discounts can count toward your marketing budget, and they offer peace of mind to consumers who are on the fence.

Analyze to see what’s working. Services such as Google Analytics or HubSpot can help you track page views and interactions with landing pages and ads. Crunch the numbers to see which parts of your campaign were most effective, and use this data for future marketing.

Bottom Line

Marketing is a complex and in-depth tool you can use to promote your business. When done right, you can benefit from increased sales, improved reputation and brand awareness and better customer retention rates. Of course, there are many strategies to choose from, so we recommend combining at least a few approaches to see the best results.

 

What is the best definition of marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy is your company’s approach to turning consumers into customers. Your strategy will include your brand’s value proposition as well as your brand messaging. You’ll also need to narrow down your target demographic, decide on distribution channels and create content for the campaign.

 

What are the four Cs of marketing?

The four Cs of marketing include customer, cost, convenience and communication. First, you need to think about the customer’s wants and needs. Second, consider cost to ensure you’re getting a good return on your investment. Finally, convenience is about making it easy for customers to buy your product, and communication refers to sharing the right information about your product.