What is marketing?
The term "marketing" covers many different activities, all of which involve selling your company's products and services. For example, advertising is the most obvious marketing activity, but the launch of an advertising campaign is preceded by research into consumer preferences. The main goal of this study is to find a better match between the consumer characteristics of the company's services and the actual needs of customers. The level of service, office or website design are also a form of marketing, as they help highlight the service's compliance with customer expectations.
The only thing that is not marketing, according to some marketing experts, is the act of selling itself, which is the result of marketing.
Internet marketing: main properties and prospects
Internet marketing represents modern and completely new ways of finding clients and promoting websites. Unlike traditional advertising, the main goal of Internet marketing is to attract visitors to the websites of customer companies and ensure that the maximum number of them eventually become clients or customers.
On video: Internet marketing: main properties and prospects
Internet marketing has several advantages that make it more profitable than conventional advertising. Thus, it is characterized by interactivity, which allows you to work directly with clients online.
One of the convenient and profitable mechanisms that Internet marketing uses is targeting. Thanks to it, it is possible to select a target audience from the entire audience existing on the network, thus, only a certain audience of users sees the advertisement.
Internet marketing specialists not only promote client websites, but also use web analytics methods, which allows them to analyze the company’s activities and thereby achieve greater website efficiency.
On video: How to open a web studio (internet marketing agency) and make it successful
The main activities of the Internet marketing agency will be the following:
- organization of business events of various nature and scale;
- PR support for client companies in the Internet space, including reputation management, promotion and other services;
- Internet promotion of brands, including SMM, SEO, SMO, content marketing.
Thus, having developed a strategy for the future Internet marketing agency and determined the main directions of future activities, you should begin planning its opening.
What is the conflict between habit and marketing?
What do most small business owners do every day? They have a business vision: to bring the best product to the market, operate above the competition, and serve many happy and satisfied customers who have been talking about their company for years. But instead of making a plan to achieve all this, they come to the office every day and work hard, relying only on what they can easily handle. This is simply buying any advertising cheaply or selling your products at a discount, hoping to attract the right clients who will highly value their work and are willing to constantly pay for the services. After that, they expect that all these clients will tell their friends and acquaintances about them.
Obviously, a business must be able to plan for success. A small business owner needs to define goals and objectives:
- What will become the sales driver?
- What value can you offer to the market?
- What level of service needs to be provided?
- How can you achieve quality service?
- What do I need to do?
- How will the services be promoted?
- Who should be invited to cooperate?
Or leave everything as it is, and continue to hope for what is easy and cheap, counting only on some results. But are these results a reflection of the success that a small business owner wants to achieve?
Get the most out of social media
Social networks are one of the cheapest and most effective channels for attracting customers. If you want millions of users to learn about your company and interact with your brand, you need to promote your business online. Here are examples of inexpensive ways to use social networks to increase sales.
Pay attention to Facebook
Despite the latest events related to Facebook, it is worth paying attention to this social network. It's not like Facebook users change their preferences, ie. and you shouldn't do that.
Example post from McDonald's (note user engagement)
Facebook still boasts a large number of users compared to other platforms, so it is worth devoting time and sharing different forms of content such as: videos (TOP 10 video content ideas), polls, webinars, articles, infographics (e.g. Interesting Facts about GetResponse) etc.
Stay connected
How to involve users? When customers have shared their positive or negative experiences, it is important to respond quickly and thoroughly. Customers who interact with a brand via social media are more likely to recommend the product or service to their friends and acquaintances.
Let customers hear your brand's supportive and charismatic voice (read more in What's Your Brand Voice?). Answer user questions max. within 24 hours and solve their problems. If you introduce yourself additionally, the user will feel an individual attitude towards his problem.
Small business promotion and competitors
You shouldn't imitate everything the competition does on social media (we wrote about this in the article "Why Competitor Analysis Can Be Harmful?"), but you should definitely keep your finger on the pulse.
Here's an example of Disney's post for #NationalIceCreamDay, followed shortly after by Universal Studios (?) There's nothing wrong with being inspired by a competitor's post. Look at what your competition is posting online and try to improve it so you can attract more users.
Test different calls to action
You shouldn't be overbearing or picky, but call buttons should be included in blog articles, posts, and videos. Always provide clear instructions so that the user clearly understands what action he must perform. For example, in a post on LinkedIn, TAB asked followers to register for a webinar. Clear and understandable.
Support and engage
Social media is not a place for forced sales, but it is a great solution for building strong relationships with customers and providing useful business-related content. It's important to be there when users need your support, want to learn more about your business or products, or are trying to find information about your industry or niche. If your small business becomes a source of useful and timely information, you will create a large community of users who will become your customers.
Every business needs a strategy
In practice, marketing strategy affects all business functions. Coordination of various departments of the company based on the marketing plan is critical to eliminating interference and gaps in service quality. As a result, marketing increases the actual profit of the enterprise. Marketing strategy looks at all areas of a small business through the lens of satisfying known and hidden customer needs, helping marketers generate revenue.
Marketing strategies cover such important aspects of business activities as:
- Determining the need for services through consumer research to identify the most effective sales models for similar products on the market
- Changing the consumer characteristics of services offered to the market or creating new ones in accordance with the real needs of customers
- Determining how best to attract potential customers by informing them about your products, persuading them to buy services
- Create advertising campaigns based on the most effective way to reach potential customers
- Maintaining customer relationships through follow-up promotions and loyalty programs
Small Business Marketing Strategies - Let's Summarize
Before you forget about developing a marketing strategy again this year, consider the above. Small business marketing doesn't have to be an expensive solution. Do you think this is impossible? Then just read about the blue ocean theory and see for yourself that even small companies can develop successfully, even globally.
Using creativity, experience and expertise, research and resources, you will satisfy customer needs and acquire new leads without breaking the bank.
The product development process is simplified
A marketing strategy helps small businesses create new services that have the best potential chance of making a profit. This is because marketing planning begins with market research, taking into account the needs of the optimal target market. Using information about demand and trends, you can determine what customers want and what benefits they expect. In this way, you can differentiate your own product from the services of competitors, and gain consumer trust and effective demand.
Research your target audience
Before you finalize what your marketing strategy will consist of, which elements will be implemented this year and which will be implemented next year, you must study your target audience. Mandy Porta argues that small businesses can successfully compete with large companies in their niche.
If you want to successfully promote your small business on the Internet, study which channels your loyal customers come from and pay special attention to these channels in your marketing strategy. If you notice that your target customers regularly read local publications, it may be worth advertising there, highlighting the benefits of the products or services. If the majority of customers come from social networks, then the most effective solution would be paid advertising on social networks. Study the market, how customers search for goods or services, and what types of products interest them. This way, you will ensure that your marketing strategy is developed correctly and will not waste your budget on ineffective advertising campaigns and unproductive marketing tools.
Marketing helps determine optimal prices
Part of the marketing strategy is to set a fair price for the company's services based on information obtained from market research. If you learn that customers want a high-quality, high-end product, the pricing strategy may require the company to sell services at high prices that create perceived luxury value. If your target customer is a conscious bargainer and is willing to buy more at lower prices, the company's pricing strategy should include discounts and additional preferences.
Product line
“Customers want different things, and some of them always want a premium package,” Lopez says. “If you only have one service with one price, you will lose customers who want more.”
Instead, he recommends creating four packages: $997, $1,997, $4,997 and $9,997. This way you will have a basic product and a VIP option. The difference lies in the amount and type of work you will do.
For $997, you could optimize a client's site to better convert traffic into leads. And create a simple email funnel - and this is a very valuable asset - to increase LTV.
For $1,997, you can manage all of a client's social media accounts and package them properly.
“For $9,997, you could offer the same services as the $1,997 package, but invest $4,000 in advertising on Google and Facebook,” says Lopez.
Marketing builds better product distribution
Once a small business has positioned its product to its target market, the company owner can choose effective sales channels that will maximize the company's profits. Marketing effectiveness is determined by a deep understanding of the customer base. Young people will prefer online sales with payment by card in an online store. Older clients prefer direct communication, and hence the need for an office and front office staff. Quite often, for example in the hospitality industry, you have to resort to the services of a distributor. This is dictated by the need to cover a very wide geography of potential buyers.
Attracting clients
In this business niche, there is potential for development of both a small company and a large organization. They are able to distinguish themselves by only one indicator, the number of personnel working for them, and therefore the number of orders on which they are able to work simultaneously.
The best method to attract new clients is if you are recommended by trusted people, perhaps friends, colleagues who know you personally.
The field of such marketing research is poorly developed in Russia, so it is unlikely that a new agency will be able to obtain the necessary recommendations. In order to quickly disseminate information about your agency, create a website for your company. Large companies, when deciding to conduct research, first of all look for performers on the Internet.
Creating a website will require new costs, depending on how it will work, requests, regions and feedback from your customers.
Distribute as much information as possible about the agency, be it advertising mailings, appearing in a newspaper or magazine, or entering information into an agency directory.
A common way to find potential clients is by direct mailing to directors and heads of marketing departments in large companies.
Agencies with extensive research experience, which they can recognize by seeing a portfolio, are very popular. As a rule, small firms offer a narrow range of issues in which they specialize.
The role of marketing in society
The role of marketing in society is enormous. You could even say that all developed humanity rests on marketing. Therefore, the marketing infrastructure in developed countries is actively developing. As a result, there is an effective demand for talent, who have the opportunity not only to do what they love, but also to earn money from it.
The role of marketing in the US economy is simply enormous.
As a result, talented people do not have to do other things and this allows them to preserve their talents and develop them. Accordingly, we can conclude that the role of marketing in society is to give talented people the opportunity to realize their talents. This in turn leads to the development of society and its enrichment.
Proof that it is marketing that determines whether talent will be lost or not is a clear example in the form of the United States. The role of marketing in the US economy is simply enormous. This country has the best developed marketing and thanks to this, the best environment for the development of talents has been created, where they are valued and are part of the elite.
The economic role of marketing
It was marketing that helped create favorable conditions for the development of talent in developed countries. People from developed countries realized that the economic role of marketing is simply enormous and began to actively promote it and implement it everywhere. Through marketing, a large number of needs and an equal number of markets have been created in developed countries.
If there is no infrastructure, then even if you are a supergenius, you will hardly be able to implement your ideas
Favorable conditions attract manufacturers from all over the world to the markets of these countries. As a result, the level of competition there is simply off the charts. High competition forces businesses in these countries to organize a real hunt for talent, be it football players, hockey players, designers, marketers and many others. Talents don't go to waste there.
The contribution of marketing to creating conditions for the development of talent is significant, and very often decisive. Through marketing, an infrastructure is created for the implementation of ideas, because talents are, as a rule, carriers of ideas and they need an infrastructure for their implementation. If there is no infrastructure, then even if you are a super genius, you will hardly be able to implement your ideas,
The main role of marketing
Talented people living in the USA have very high incomes. In the USA, the development of talent is supported by both the state and business, because the authorities there have long understood that the development of society directly depends on the number of innovations being introduced, and the number of innovations is directly proportional to the number of talented people.
At the same time, the development of innovations without the development of marketing is impossible in principle.
At the same time, the development of innovations without the development of marketing is impossible in principle. There is no question about whether a business needs marketing or not. They realized long ago that marketing is a real tool, and marketing and innovation are a powerful tandem. Please note - this is not an advertisement for the United States, but simply a statement of fact, because the share of the US economy in the world economy is more than 20%.
It is impossible to solve the issue of missing talent and, as a consequence, the issue of economic development without marketing. You can try to force talented people to show their talents using force, but you know that you won’t be nice by force. You cannot create a market through violence. The market can be created and developed only in a non-violent environment,
The modern role of marketing
Sitting and waiting all your life for weather from the sea is not the best choice in our world, where money means a lot. One of the best options for making money is trading. Many talents go into trade. As a result, they invest their time and talent to learn how to sell more and thereby earn more.
… the modern role of marketing is to serve trade
Due to the fact that many people have gone into trade, it turns out that the modern role of marketing is to serve trade. Trade actively uses marketing for its purposes. Even a corresponding term has appeared - sales marketing. Through marketing tools, sales marketing ensures increased sales and maximization of profits.
Not everyone goes into sales; many emigrate to places where there are markets necessary for developing talent. The development of markets in Western countries is much stronger, in addition, the level of competition there is much stronger. This leads to the fact that in these countries the main focus is on talent, because there is no other way to beat competitors.
