Marketing Is All About Benefits... And Experience
Sunday, January 16, 2011
During the last week, I had some really great conversation with fellow marketers. Whenever we see each other, we always come back to the fundamentals of marketing. What separates good marketing from bad marketing? Where are the boundaries of marketing? Where do marketing and sales need to work together and when do they work independently?
In my opinion, it's easy to find bad marketing but a little more challenging to find good marketing. If the marketing you are doing, or would like to do for your business, can accomplish a few basic objectives, you can in fact call it "good marketing."
1. Does your marketing speak to your audience? Does your print, email, or web communication speak to your market the way they want to be spoken to? Are you communicating based on knowledge and understanding of your audience?
One of the most important aspects of effective marketing is messaging! If you speak to your target market based on your understanding of what is important to them, their needs, and where they are in the decision making process, then you just found good marketing.
2. Does your offer resonate with your market? If you offer a buy one get one half off, does your target really care about the second item? For example, if I go to the movies by myself and the theater is offering buy one and get the second half off, this doesn't appeal to me. However, if they give me a coupon for $1 off a medium popcorn, I may purchase something I didn't go there intending to buy.
Always be testing and working different offers in order to find out what will resonate with your audience. Which offers do your target audience truly value?
3. Are you timing your campaigns appropriately? If you're emailing everyone when they are attending the industry's national convention, your chances of a good response are very limited. If you understand your audience (tip #1) and their schedule, you are in a much better position to have marketing success. Sending emails to students who are away on Spring break won't help your business - neither will sending b to b emails on a Friday afternoon. Know the schedule of your audience if you want to do "good marketing".
4. Create a dialogue with your audience. To know your audience you must interact with them on a regular basis. If all you're doing is pushing information out, you aren't in tune with what your audience is thinking and doing. The best way to create a dialogue with your audience is to ask them for feedback. Surveys, open ended questions, and contests are a great way to get information about their thoughts and behaviors.
By creating a constant feedback loop you can improve the response to your marketing campaigns. In addition, you can get helpful information that fine tunes your campaigns and improves response rates.
Know your audience, find a relevant offer and target your market at the right time. With these simple steps you can improve your marketing results!
Marketing Blog founder and top-selling author Michael Fleischner has been featured on The TODAY Show, ABC World News, and Bloomerg Radio. 
30 comments :
The best tricks are not tricks at all, but rather proven methods to getting better results and seeing higher conversion rates.
Many marketers that I see simply don't get it. It seems nowadays you must either wear many hats or have a team. Someone needs to watch the numbers. Tracking and analyzing metrics is a huge part of marketing success; if you don’t know where you are, you can’t tell if you’re improving…or not.
Here are some of the hats you may need to wear:
http://outtoown.com/2010/11/15/5-reasons-why-you-need-a-social-media-dream-team/
Thank you Michael for this great knowledge. I specifically agree with point # 1. Does your marketing speak to your audience? If you get this one right, success is on it's way.
One important thing I've learned about marketing is that it's important to give before you get. Give a little time, some good information or an offer of help and you will gain a more loyal customer then if you just try and sell, sell, sell the minute you see them. Surveys are okay, but many people (including me) find them annoying. That's taking, not giving.
Interesting post, though. Thanks.
So true, its funny how easy it is to skip the basics and focus on more complex marketing. But if you do the fundamentals really well, sometimes you don't even need the fancier advertising channels.
These are really great points to keep in mind when doing marketing, including online marketing. Thanks for sharing.
Well Michael . . . Good points you have mentioned previously. We are here in front of 3 major issues to review and study : ROMI, CONTENT and MARKETING COMMUNICATION. I believe that future marketers would tend to adopt "FOCUSED MARKETING" strategies where they can simply track and improve the marketing / campaigns outcome.
Great post. It is always better to get to know your audience before you actually start pushing products on them. Of course, it all depends on how your list is set up - whether it is an opt-in list or a customer list, will depend on what and how you "talk" with them.
I am a director at a web video marketing company called VisionReel and we are finding that using relevant tagged video on site landing pages is having a positive effect on customers natural listings within google. Since 2007 it has been possible to list video within the Google Sitemap and I think this is something that often gets overlooked but really gives an edge over the SEO services of competitors. We have written a document called '24 Key facts a marketing manager needs to know about web video" and you are very welcome to download a copy from our website at visionreel.com. I hope you find it of use.
Your marketing tips have the same effect when it comes to Email Marketing. The one thing that binds all 4 of your tips together is relevance, whether it be relevant content, markets, timing or prospects.
It's the best and most efficient way to convert, not to mention it screams best marketing practice.
Thanks for the post.
Thank you for sharing precise knowledge. Every company strives to get customers positive associations with brands but don't know how to tailer its brand message according to specific niche it has.
Awesome post! Recognizing that service is an essential factor in attracting and retaining customers, organizations are increasingly turning to technology to help them improve their clients’ experience while aiming to increase efficiency and minimize costs.
Thanks so much for these guidelines. It would be very useful for my marketing strategy. This would definitely give good outcome for my revenue.
Very informative post! I happen to work in a marketing business and found your post to be very useful in our strategy seminar this coming weekend. I am sure going to expound and share this to everyone. Thanks Michael!
In online marketing, you are not just experiencing the way of typical promotions. You must express yourself in how can you get attentions from your prospective clients. You must be aware also that marketing online is an enjoying job which you can deal on many matters.
Great post! I agree that timing is everything. Our company produces branded giveaways for tradeshows, corporate events and job recruitment. One challenge is getting clients to think far enough ahead so they can incorporate promotional products into a future campaign.
Marketing is not just advertising your product - It requires a lot of research, creativity while creating the taglines and also correctly identifying the niche audience you want to target. Without any of these points , one should not expect that sales of their product will be higher. Knowledge of your product, competitor and the market is also very important.
Reading your post let me gain more knowledge about marketing. It's really fun learning from other people. Marketing is not really that easy, anyway thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Could not agree more! Love point 4 - Been reading through David Scott's New Rules of Marketing and I think social media provides the perfect opportunity to create a dialogue with your audience. It is also a great way to keep up with market trends as well as educate your audience! Take Lexus for example, using youtube to educate customers about their production process... a great way to reach your market through modern media, via video, allowing perfect opportunity for them to provide feedback as well.
Nowadays, there are multiple ways to market a business no matter if it is a small or large one. Marketing techniques are flexible, objectives, and some of them, easy and cheap to execute. They way a small business markets itself is essential to prolong its survival in this marketing-aggressive era. Small businesses need to create a loyalty among their customers. The best way for achieving loyalty is by ALWAYS INTERACTING with customers by keeping them updated and involved with the business’ activities; which I believe is the goal of Michael Fleischner in here.
The suggestions from above, if executed, would lead the business to reach its marketing objective: positive word-of-mouth followed by top-of-mind awareness without having to invest tons of money.
I am a student major in Marketing and I am currently working on a marketing plan for an online video company. I really think all of these steps are very important to be successful not only with the marketing but in the business you are doing marketing for. Good marketing helps business to increase their profits which is what they're looking for.
I think #4 is imperative. A great way to do this is via social media, interacting with your customers on blogs, twitter, facebook, etc. These are avenues for your consumers to talk freely about your product/service. Yes, surveys and open ended questions help, but first scan the web to see what your customers are saying.
I also bookmarked and tweeted this. Thank you so much for showing great concern for other people. Much Respect!
It seems to be a good news of marketing benefits.
You are right dear marketing is all about benefit. Marketing is the process of performing market research, selling products and/or services to customers and promoting them via advertising to further enhance sales. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.
Being new to the marketing segment, it is refreshing to see that the same principles I am being taught and still used by veterans of the business. So many times during my educational background I have been taught things where I cannot foresee where it would be applicable in the real world.
Reading over the article, these are all the things I am currently learning about. Creating a marketing strategy that focuses are the customers wants and needs and ensure that it is creating the right message and reaching who it is intended for. Like others have said, it easy to caught up in the complexities of a marketing strategy. Taking it back down to the core can really help us ensure what we are providing in the end does create value and great experience to build off of.
It is very true. If your marketing campaign focuses on the fundamental steps you have mentioned here there is no way that you will get it wrong. Sometimes we the marketers pay more attention to the complex things and forget about getting the basics right and therefore end up having very average marketing campaigns. When you analyse the root cause for the failure you realize it all happen because of not getting the fundamentals right.
Your blog is fantastic. I stay away from No Follow Blogs. It was really looked-for. I am contented with your blog.
Great post. Regular reader of your blog and always find information useful.
The best practice is to consider customers very important. Put yourself in their place and see how appealing the marketing of the company is! you will get the answers.
Thanks for sharing your info. I really appreciate your efforts and I will be waiting for your further write ups thanks once again.
I am confident that everything you have stated will certainly pierce the ears from the readers and make them consider extra deeply about it. You genuinely showed them!
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