What is marketing?

Marketing is the action of promoting your business and products to supply leads to your sales team. It involves creating campaigns that tell the story of your business to attract prospective customers to your brand. To do this, you’ll conduct research to learn who your target audience is and create marketing campaigns catered toward people who would directly benefit from your product.

Once a marketing campaign launches, you’ll review the analytics and campaign results to determine how many people it reached and attracted. This helps you better understand what marketing methods you’re doing right and what to improve.

Why is marketing important?

Marketing campaigns are an effective way to tell others about your business. Some benefits of marketing campaigns are:

• Increase understanding of your product:High-performing campaigns have content that informs and engages your audience so they’ll better understand your product, brand and industry.
• Increase retention rate:Marketing campaigns with valuable and educational content establishes your business as an industry leader. This builds customer loyalty, leading customers to stay with your business longer.
• Promote your products within budgetary limits:Marketing methods like writing blog posts, creating social media posts and sending email campaigns sometimes have a lower cost than traditional print advertising.
• Improve lead generation through targeted marketing:Directing your campaigns toward people who benefit the most from your product increases the likelihood of them purchasing it, supplying you with more leads.
• Increase awareness of your product: Content and campaigns can be catered to audiences and created in ways that are shareable. When people share your content with their network, you read a wider audience.

Types of marketing

Many forms of marketing are available to help build effective strategies that attract more leads and provide impressive results. Different types of marketing to use when launching campaigns includes:

Content marketing

Content marketing involves writing and distributing consistent copy to attract and retain your target audience. Content marketing is available in a variety of forms including:

• Blog posts
• Articles
• Social media posts
• eBooks
• White papers
• Emails

Your goal is to create consistent content that educates, informs and directly relates to your audience to give valuable information that benefits prospects and customers. This builds a strong relationship with your audience by providing solutions.

SEO marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO) improves the ranking of your website on search engines. By properly optimizing your content to reach certain SEO standards, your website appears on the first page of search engine results. SEO-optimized content helps you show up organically on search results, meaning your website appears there for free, rather than through paid advertising.

Optimizing your content for search engines entails creating valuable content that’s easy to read with keywords and relevant information your audience is seeking.

Analytical marketing

Study website analytics to understand how well your website and content is performing. Different tools provide various information regarding how users are navigating your website, like which pages customers are visiting, links they’re clicking on, demographics and geographical locations they’re living in. Viewing these analytical tools helps you learn your customers’ browsing habits and preferences.

Social media marketing

Build a social media profile and add regular updates to engage with your audience. Many social media platforms have analytical tracking tools that list who’s engaging with your posts to help cater content toward your target audience. Interact with your customers directly on social media platforms by replying to them in comment sections or through direct messages.

Regularly publish posts that provide relevant information to your followers or create engaging posts to express your brand’s voice and tell its story. Share posts with:

• Links to your recently published blogs
• Pictures of your staff at events or working on projects together
• Live video Q&As or product demonstrations
• Offers and discounts on your products

Email marketing

This effective marketing technique allows you to cater messaging to leads depending on which stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in. The buyer’s journey is the stages of the purchasing process, which are awareness, consideration and decision. For example, to create emails for customers still researching your product, share educational resources and industry-specific content. This helps them learn more about your brand and product, while building a lasting relationship with you.

Send emails weekly, biweekly or monthly—stay consistent to continue the conversation with your customer. Consider creating a newsletter with product and industry updates and valuable and relevant content.

Paid advertising

This form of marketing involves using your budget to publish targeted campaigns. Your advertisements can appear on social media platforms, search engines and elsewhere on the internet. It helps you build brand awareness by reaching larger audiences as you appear on more people’s social media feed and search engine results.

Print marketing

This type of marketing appears in printed media, like magazines, newspapers or billboards. By researching your target audience, you’ll understand which type of print media they use and where to place your advertisement.

How to develop a marketing strategy

Developing a marketing strategy involves careful market research and established branding. Follow these steps to develop an effective marketing strategy:

1. Set your goals

Establish the marketing and sales goals you want to hit for the upcoming quarter. Review your sales and marketing lead numbers to best determine your goals. Common marketing goals are:

• Revenue amount you’d like to generate
• How much traffic you want to reach your site
• The customer retention rate you’d like to Increase
• Conversion rate amount you’d like to boost

2. Research your market

To create content catered to your audience, conduct research to better understand their needs and buying habits. You can do this by calling, emailing or conducting surveys to learn why existing customers like your product or brand. This helps build and develop your target audience and buyer personas. Ask customers questions regarding:

• What they like about your product
• How your product benefits them
• What your company should improve
• How they would describe your brand
• Spending habits
• Age
• Demographics
• Gender
• Geographical location
• Profession

3. Retain and nurture your customers

Once you’ve gained a strong target audience, create content catered toward their wants, needs and stage of the buying process. Regularly maintain communication with customers by creating consistent content and campaigns targeted toward them. This helps nurture your relationship with your audience so they feel more connected and committed to your brand.

Develop effective marketing strategies to help you successfully promote your brand and retain more customers. Carefully research your market to learn the best ways to connect with your target audience.