Marketing is an art and science – a constantly changing field that encompasses creativity and data to facilitate relationships between businesses and their audiences. No matter if you are launching your first startup or running a global corporation, a fundamental understanding of marketing is necessary to achieve sustainable growth and outperform competitors.
What is marketing?
At its most basic level, marketing is about recognizing customers’ needs and providing value with products and/or services. Marketing consists of many activities such as market research, advertising, brand strategy, public relations, content creation, sales strategy and more. Marketing is not simply about selling a product to a customer; it is about establishing long lasting relationships with a customer and creating brand loyalty.
The Four Ps of marketing
One of the foundational marketing principles is the “Four Ps”:
1. Product – what you are selling, which includes quality, design, features and benefits.
2.Price – the amount you charge for your product , based on demand, competition and perceived value.
3. Place – where you sell your product and how it is made available to customers.
4.Promotion – the sales and marketing tools to reach and convince the potential customer to engage with your business and/or product (if they decide to buy) . Promotion should include advertising, social media, email campaigns, and public relations.
Digital Marketing: The New World Order
The emergence of the internet has changed the nature of “traditional” marketing. In many ways, digital marketing has allowed an organization to deliver the promotional message via an online medium (the internet) to customers in a more targeted and cost-effective manner. The key components of digital marketing include:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The process of optimizing your website so that it is better positioned in search engines (e.g., Google);
Content Marketing. The creation of content that has value for your audience so that they will engage with it;
Social Media Marketing. Promoting products via social media, e.g., Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn etc.;
Email Marketing. Using email to build relationships with customers in order to get them to convert to purchasing your product offering; and
Pay-per-click (PPC). Paid advertising to get visitors to your website.
Have an Audience
No matter what type of ‘marketing’ effort you are going to implement (e.g. digital marketing, advertising, content marketing, etc.) there are a number of choices to be made to communicate with your audience. You must know who your audience is. This process includes performing demographic analysis, demographic and psycho-graphic profiling, and/or the mapping of a customer journey. Nowadays, marketers have access to a lot of readily available tools, resources, and information via the internet to make audience-determined decisions, including Google Analytics, a CRM, or other tools that use artificial intelligence as a method to generate classes of insights about customers and audiences.
Brand Precedes Marketing
If marketing is a cog, then a winning brand is the form to power the marketing engine. A successful brand should help you separate yourself from the competition and build trust. Branding is more than just a logo; branding is your voice, your values, and your promise to your customers. All brand communications should be consistent across all of the various touch points, e.g. websites, product packaging, customer engagement interactions, etc.
Evaluating Success
Metrics play an important role in understanding the success of marketing activity. Critical KPIs (key performance indicators) such as conversion rates, click-through rates (CTR), return on investment (ROI), and Customer acquisition cost (CAC) help marketers to work out what is clear and what they need to change.
Conclusion
The environment for marketing is changing quickly, and being successful requires marketers to be flexible, innovative, and able to embrace new technologies. As customers change their behaviours it will be those marketers who are able to combine a data-driven approach with a storytelling approach rooted in human experience that will be most successful.