Having worked in the marketing profession myself for 10 years and Jill for 20, you’d be surprised at the varying takes on marketing we’ve seen amongst our peers. We’re not here to write about being the next marketing messiahs*… there are plenty of good (and bad) ones about already.
What we want to provide our audience with (that’s you!), is actionable marketing advice that will grow your business.
What is Marketing?
The best place to start with this is by defining what marketing is. That way you can make the correct decisions from day one. Otherwise it’s like cooking a new dish, without reading the recipe (if you’re anything like me, it’ll probably go wrong).
Where to start?
Marketing can be broken down in to 4 stages. At Need to Know Marketing, we call these the 4 Steps of Marketing:
- Research
- Strategy
- Design & Communication
- Measurement
Different businesses will be at different stages. Now, if a marketing expert or agency begins talking about design straight away, without any questions around your research and strategy, you may be talking to a designer.
We’ve got nothing against designers, we use them regularly. But without defining who your audience is to build a successfully strategy, how can anybody hope to create a successful marketing campaign? Likelihood is, you will end up with a pretty picture.
A full marketing campaign will consider:
Research
At this stage define who your audience are. What is their gender, age, what are their likes, dislikes and what do they find unique about your product?
Now you don’t need to panic and employ a huge market research agency to do this for you. What we’d recommend is spending some time in retail stores, sampling and talking to your customers or if you sell in the business-to-business sector, making some customer visits with your sales team.
Strategy
Once you have answered these questions and built profile(s) of your target customer(s), you can begin to piece a strategy together that will consider your audience and the different communication channels (e.g. social media, print, your website) that they use regularly.
Design & Communication
Now we arrive at the design and communication stage! Using your developed strategy, you will be able to create the designs and copy (text) that will communicate effectively with your audience and encourage them to become a follower of your brand, bringing them in to your sales cycle.
Measurement
At this stage it’s important to evaluate what worked and what didn’t. Did the marketing steps you executed, result in increased sales or interest?
If not, was the marketing communication the issue or was it another element (e.g. the pricing of the product)? This stage allows you to repeat your successes and improve on them.
What to do now
We recommend figuring out what stage you’re at with your marketing and work on improving things from there. If you have any marketing related questions about any of the stages, please feel free to email us at [email protected]
*His name is Brian and he is a very naughty boy…