Here we will discuss the basics of marketing, give you an understanding of marketing as well as provide you with a few tips to help you out with your business.
What is marketing?
Marketing is promoting services or products by means of advertising in various forms. For example, if you have a product, and have a commercial, a radio spot, and a website, those are all forms of marketing. Marketing is used to tell your consumers about your product. While you'd like to sell your product or service, the main goal of marketing is not to make the sale but rather make your product visible to consumers. Marketing strives not only to make the product visible but also to demonstrate the product or service's value.
An example of great marketing, is the story of Grey Goose Vodka. In 1996, Sidney Frank had come up with one thing, the name Grey Goose, despite him not having a distillery, he strived to produce a premium vodka coming out of France, a country never known for it's vodka. Yet fast forward to not even a decade after it's conception, and Grey Goose was sold to Bacardi for a whopping 2 billion dollars. How did this unknown brand become so valuable? Marketing. Grey Goose sold themselves as a premium vodka, because that is the value they felt they had. It's important to not undersell yourself when it comes to business, if your service or product is genuinely good, make sure your marketing reflects that.
Types of marketing:
Traditional Marketing - This would include print ads, billboards, radio spots, and tv commercials, though still an effective form of marketing, in the digital age, for the most part it's important not to rely solely on traditional marketing, though there are still certain industries that will use this form of marketing almost exclusively and still have great success.
Online Marketing - Online marketing can mean so many things, from banners, social networking, search engine optimization, email blasts, to viral marketing, there's always something new going on with online marketing and it's important to keep up with the trends, especially if your business is based online.
Guerilla Marketing - Ever been to a concert and there's a kid standing outside handing out flyers after the show? That's a form of guerilla marketing, getting your brand out there directly to yourtarget audience. Guerilla marketing can also include many different types of marketing techniques, from flyers to putting up posters on telephone poles.
Word of Mouth - Word of mouth is one of the most important forms of marketing. When a friend tells you about a new product they've used it's because they genuinely enjoy or find a product useful, you know your friend is not getting any benefit from you buying the same product, so their words mean more than 10 billboards on a city block.
Before marketing, the most important thing to have is a good product or service, marketing will help, but it will not sustain clientele if your product is not what it's portrayed to be. Good luck!