What Do Marketers Do?

If you enjoy working with people and are interested in the latest technologies, a career in marketing may be for you. Marketing is highly innovative and ever-changing, a combination that makes for an exciting career. If you are considering a career as a marketer, learning about the different types of marketing can help you decide if this career is for you. In this article, we discuss what marketers do, explore 12 different types of marketing and how powerful it can be when aligned with a company's sales department.

What do marketers do?

Marketers are responsible for developing and executing strategies to promote brands, products and services, maximizing profits for the company. They monitor trends and develop pricing strategies and advertising campaigns. They also compile demographic data and develop targeting strategies to build greater awareness of the products and services that the company offers. Some of their primary responsibilities include:

• Optimizing websites for the search engines

• Writing engaging sales copy

• Capturing sales leads

• Building email campaigns

• Creating buyer personas based on market research

• Tracking and analyzing website ROI

• Running advertising campaigns

Related: Learn About Being a Marketing Director

12 types of marketing

Marketing is ultimately the process by which consumers learn about and purchase products and services. However, there are numerous strategies marketers use to accomplish that. Here is a look at 12 different types of marketing:

• Branding

• Paid advertising

• Relationship marketing

• Cause marketing

• Word-of-mouth marketing

• Point-of-purchase marketing

• Transactional marketing

• Direct selling

• Social media and viral marketing

• Referral programs

• Search engine marketing

• Email marketing

Related: Key Marketing Skills to List on a Resume (With Examples)

1. Branding

Branding is a type of marketing that helps to make a product or service attractive and instantly recognizable. It often includes slogans, distinctive names and graphics, such as logos.

2. Paid advertising

This type of marketing refers to several different approaches, including print media advertising and television commercials. The most common form of advertising today, though, is internet marketing, such as pay-per-click (PPC) and sponsored ads.

3. Relationship marketing

This approach to marketing focuses on building relationships with customers and improving customer loyalty. Using this strategy, you provide information to customers about your products that are directly suited for their interests and needs.

4. Cause marketing

This is a marketing strategy used by for-profit businesses where the organization links their products and services to a social issue or cause. With cause marketing, the company markets an idea or goal rather than a specific product or service.

5. Word-of-mouth marketing

This type of marketing is where companies use satisfied customers to promote their businesses. The goal is to provide customers with a great product or service and a positive overall experience so that they share their experience with people they know. This is one of the most powerful forms of marketing, as customers trust the word of their friends and family and will be far more likely to purchase from an organization after hearing about it in this way.

6. Point-of-purchase marketing

Point-of-purchase marketing is when a company places a display next to the merchandise that it is promoting. This display is often located in the checkout area, although it may be placed strategically in aisles. Weekly fliers that advertise specials are also a form of POP marketing.

7. Transactional marketing

With transactional marketing, companies encourage consumers to make purchases by offering coupons and discounts. Promotional events are also a form of transactional marketing. The goal is to increase the likelihood of a sale by offering a special promotion to motivate potential buyers.

8. Direct selling

This type of marketing requires face-to-face interaction with a customer, where the salesperson discusses the role that their products or services could play in the consumer's life. This is a common approach that multi-level marketing companies use to promote their products and services.

9. Social media and viral marketing

Social media marketing is where you use social platforms to connect with an audience, increase brand awareness, drive website traffic and promote products or services. It is a valuable strategy for reaching customers since companies can focus their attention on platforms where people in their target market spend the majority of their time online.

Viral marketing is where the public at large is sharing content, rather than just the target market. This style of promotion relies on an audience to generate the message. While there is no way to predict what content will go viral, this type of marketing usually happens in conjunction with a company's social media campaign.

10. Referral programs

With this type of marketing, a company offers a discount or incentive for referring paying customers or leads to your business. A referral program relies on word-of-mouth marketing but is a deliberate, systematic way to encourage people to share your brand.

11. Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing is when companies create content to get it to rank in the search engines. By creating unique, valuable content, an organization can generate links back to their content and increase the rank of the company's website as a whole.

12. Email marketing

Email marketing is the process of sending messages to potential or current customers. Those emails could include information about the niche, industry news or advertisements. They could also request business or solicit sales or donations.

Related: What Is the Difference Between Marketing and Advertising

How marketing and sales work together

Marketing and sales are closely linked. To work together effectively, marketing activities should integrate with sales, acquiring leads, helping turn them into warm leads through email campaigns and other marketing strategies and working with sales to turn them into long-term customers.

By making sure that marketing and sales are working in alignment, a company can achieve higher revenue, convert more leads into customers and retain a more significant percentage of its customers. Marketing has access to data that shows the type of content and language that customers respond to. Sales representatives, in turn, have a strong understanding of the company's ideal customer and the sales objectives.

By encouraging and facilitating the flow of information between marketing and sales, a company can create more effective marketing campaigns and content to shorten the sales cycle and increase sales.