The MUST KNOW Basics of Marketing
Marketing is complex, and encompasses A LOT of strategies, concepts, tools, and more. Often, specialists will niche down into one area, such as digital marketing.
But for now, we wanted to make a comprehensive guide of as many of the fundamentals as we could.
Make sure to save this page somewhere and send it onto someone you think might need it, because there's a lot to work from!
What is Marketing?
A simple way of thinking of marketing is as the act of driving customer action which creates some kind of profit. That means anything that we might use to position products in a marketplace and encourage target audiences to make a purchase.
Therefore, it spans all parts of the product's lifecycle, even the development.
Here's an overview of what marketing might include, and where:
When you as a founder has a new business idea, you do some market research to determine if it's worth turning into a business.
If it is, you do some more research to flesh out all the details and start building your business.
Figure out how to reach the audience you've identified.
Figure out the right messaging to use to make them feel connected to you.
Based on your industry or niche, decide what steps your customer needs to take to make a purchase.
Map out the channels use to do that, such as blogs, social media, or something else entirely (such as an event on Clubhouse).
Before you're ready to launch, you do some pre-marketing to get potential customers ready for what you have to offer them.
When you launch, keep it up!
The Marketing Mix and the 4 P’s of Marketing
Marketing (mainly) involves four things: product, price, promotion, and place. The tactics and platforms you use to conduct these things will change over time, but these are principles that never change.
Some models expand these principles to the "7 P's of Marketing", which is a more updated version. But as a start, the main four should help you learn a lot!
Product
This is what a company sells, which includes physical goods and services exchanged for time. For your marketing needs, you'll need to focus on the following:
How many product variations should be sold - for example, a fashion designer might decide how many different products to make, under a certain number of categories (such as hoodies and t-shirts).
How should they be presented - with the same example, would they package their products in custom-made boxes when they're sent?
How will it be serviced - for example, what is the grievance and return policy if the idem of clothing isn't up to snuff.
Your marketing might include some decisions about how products are designed or what features are included.
Price
This is more than just deciding a host much something costs!
If marketing is about driving profitable actions, then your prices must be something that's actually reasonable given your industry, market, niche, or audience.
Here are some key considerations:
What is the normal market rate of a product - do some market analysis and competitive research to determine a fair price given its cost to produce (or your value if it's a service) and what people would be willing to pay for it.
How should discounts be applied - should the product be put on sale? If so, when? And by how much?
Are there payment options - for example, some higher-cost items can sometimes be paid in instalments. And with something like Klarna now becoming popular, even things that weren't considered too expensive before are now easier to pay in instalments.
Promotion
If you launch but no one cares, does it even matter?
Once a product is out there, it needs to be promoted so people know it exists!
Which channels will be used to promote the product - such as online and offline channels.
Where will it be promoted? - for example, are you operating online? Offline? In stores? At events?
What message needs to be communicated - what communications will tell audiences what the product is all about, and encourage them to buy it?
Place
The product needs to be in the right place for people to actually be able to find it and want to buy it.
Where is the product distributed - again, is it online? Offline, such as at an event? Something else?
Will specific locations get the product - for example, if you sell hoodies might sell better in colder weather!
6 Key Areas of Marketing
Like we said above, marketing covers a lot of areas and you'll probably find references to a bunch of different types. Here are 7 that we think are most relevant to being a founder or new entrepreneur.
Content Marketing
There's a good chance you've heard the saying "content is king" - and for good reason. People want to be helped and informed (we call this "enrolment") more than they want to be sold to.
Content marketing is creating content that helps inform your audience and solves their problems. And for you, this can help with:
Building an audience
Establishing authority
Driving sales
The “content” part of content marketing covers lots of different things. This usually means blogging and website content, but also includes email, social media, video, ebooks, or any other type of digital content used for marketing.
Email Marketing
When it comes to driving conversions, email marketing has some of the best returns!. It’s generally accepted that it drives around 3,800% to 4,200% ROI (meaning that for every dollar spent, it produces $38 to $42 in revenue).
This means generating as high of a click rate as possible, and depends on what you're selling, but it's well-known that it has a much higher engagement rate than pretty much anything else, such as social media.
Social Media Marketing
Organic reach on popular social networks is declining on popular Twitter and Facebook, but social media marketing is still a big deal.
It’s effective for building brand awareness, developing a community, and getting your content and products in front of new people!
Online Video Marketing
There's a reason that YouTube is so huge and has so many videos uploaded every day - video is so effective! It engages people much more than any other type of content and if people resonate with it, they're able to really easily begin resonating with you!
It's also really important on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, where generally, posts with videos will get much more engagement!
Search Engine Optimization
Very few of these tactics drive more traffic than search engine optimization.
It’s the process of structuring content and executing content-related tasks that help improve your site’s search engine rankings, pulling in an audience that’s interested in the topics your site covers, and the products your company sells.
Influencer Marketing
It's all well and good to try to promote your products yourself, but other people who already have audiences that trust them can do that for you - sometimes better than you ever could!
This involves working with popular people within a given niche or industry to put your products in front of their audiences. This is almost always at cost - but it can be surprisingly low compared to the number of people you'll reach and how likely they are to convert.
Developing a Marketing Strategy
You could ask yourself the following key questions to get a great grasp of what you need to know as a start-up founder in regards to your marketing:
Who are you trying to reach?
What do you want them to do?
How will you encourage them to take that action?
How will you measure the impact your marketing had on influencing that action?
This is simple to understand, but it can be much harder to actually execute!
You can click here to learn more about how to do that!
In conclusion...
Marketing has a lot to it! Some of the core concepts help you expand your knowledge to make decisions about where to spend your time. But overall, not all marketing boils down to direct sales. Sometimes, it's just about engagement, or sales-over-time that will lead to more engagement eventually.
It's worth spending a little bit of time understanding the 4 P's as they'll most likely decide where you should spend your time building your strategy. You'll then need to apply that to some of those marketing areas - whichever ones are relevant to your business!
But, that's all for now!
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About Seven
Hey friends! I’m Seven - I write about challenges and opportunities affecting leaders across business. I release a weekly newsletter and a podcast, helping folks understand the leadership journeys and challenges out there, so we can better understand our purpose, place, and potential. The goal: to learn about what it means to be a leader, to support leaders, to find leaders, and to discover the leader within.
I’m delighted to have received so many kind words about my newsletter, other writings, and content - so if you’d like to join the ride for free, please keep up to date by subscribing to my newsletter. Weekly thought pieces and updates, and no selling 😜
Lots of love, and here’s to your success!