The 4 Fundamentals of Marketing
Claude-Reynald Christian Lecorps
Residential and Commercial Solar Energy Consultant
The four things every beginner should learn (in 14 minute) before diving into the tactics, tools, and metrics they will learn are:
- The goals. Why you do what you’ll do: If you’re not marketing, you are not alive.
- The Mindset to the madness. How to do it: be human. Don’t be rude…
- The Skill and the Tools. What is working for me.
- Minds and measures. Be a data-driven human
I’m no expert and neither are you…
As an entrepreneur, I’ve spent the past 3 years of navigating this forest of information on tools and platforms, and definitive guides in an attempt to learn marketing for my startups only to have a plethora of disappointing ebooks and other pieces of content that were not written for human consumption.
I mean seriously, why do we need a list of anything that’s over 9 items? The Definitive Guide to Marketing with over 9000 things could make for a great resource that theoretically a person would go back to multiple times, but I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels like these lists were written as a sacrificial offering of the audiences time to the SEO deities.
And I’m not the only one. I’ve come across a dozen or so marketing students ranting on Reddit that what they are learning in school is confusing and a poor reflection of what they encountered in the real world once they got out. And other people like me who have watched enough webinars on various marketing techniques, tools, and programs over the years that it could have been a part-time job.
So I hope this second attempt on writing this article helps the students and the entrepreneurs out there trying to be that tree that makes the noise in the forest.
If you’re not marketing, you are not alive.
If you are reading this, you probably are like e and learning everything you can in the forest of marketing. You already recognize that marketing is essential to your business even in its infancy so skip down to the list. But for the tech-heavy business owners who are putting this off, you need to realize as I did in the beginning that everything that you do and don’t do affects your reputation. And Reputation is the first goal of marketing. Without a reputation, you and your business are effectively non-existent. If you fail or succeed and no one knows about it, it won’t matter.
Marketing only has 5 goals for 5 different people
- Getting people interested by building brand awareness. This is where they get to know you.
- Getting interested people to become active listeners. This is what a qualified lead is, a.k.a. a potential customer that just likes you.
- Getting listeners to trust you through thought leadership or accountability
- Getting trusted listeners to buy your value proposition. This is commonly referred to as attributing marketing activities to revenue generation
- Getting buyers to promote your solution through brand engagement
These goals come in two flavors: inbound and outbound
Outbound methods are more traditional and feel more like monologues than dialogue. Here people are forcibly interrupted by why people should buy a product/service. This is what gave rise to “junk†mail, commercial breaks, quick website exits due to popups and other annoying or intrusive elements and advertising blindness.
Storytime: I was holiday shopping with my mom recently and these two guys approached about a little known fact about modern religion and the teachings of the Bible. I don’t remember what they were talking about and as someone who is newly active in my spiritual journey, I wanted to give them a chance but the guy just wouldn’t stop monologuing. I tried to be engaging by asking him questions but he didn’t acknowledge that some of his assumptions didn’t apply to me. The biggest one being that I’m celebrating Christmas and believe in God, I will listen to him and give him my time. After I finally escaped, all I could remember was that I didn't know him nor did I get to. The way we interacted was rude so now I don’t like him, and I don’t trust anything he has to say even if it’s based on the Bible because I don’t trust his perception. The moral of the story is, get to your listener to know, like and trust you which is why outbound marketing fails so often.
People do not see sidebar ads or even banners in the middle of a page if it looks like an ad which is why inbound marketing was invented
Inbound methods focus on getting permission to continue after a micro interruption. Although optional, it is crucial and can easily be done by providing value in the form of content that people like to consume. This is how goals #1–3 are done and this builds reputation and thought leadership on a given problem/solution for the people that come to you. If they stick around, it’s because whatever you are talking about is for them in every way (more on this later). This builds a community of people who are not likely to ignore your ads when you get to goal #4 simply because you’ve gotten their permission to advertise to them.
Storytime: Learning this was stressful and painful for me. My partner and I launched a crowdfunding campaign for my cleantech startup and even though we were looking to raise less than $100k, we couldn’t do it in time because I didn’t understand this concept. I delayed build a know-like-trust relationship with people online and after 90 days of posting on social media, writing articles, blog posts, making videos, advertising and being a guest on the Caribbean Power Lunch Podcast, the only thing that generated donation were emails and text messages to people that knew me, liked what I was trying to do and trusted that I would get it done because they had been aware of all the work I had put into it.
This is traditionally referred to as a funnel but as more and more marketers and customers start to engage in step 5 to create evangelists, the funnel feeds itself and becomes a flywheel, which has been widely successful when a product goes viral by design like in the case of Dropbox, Apple, and Bumble.
The Mindset to the Madness
Why Each Step of your “Flywheel†Matters and How To Master Them With a Simple Mindset
Be human. Be a great host of their time and money. Don’t be rude by forgoing their choices. And I do mean “beâ€. It’s a continuous process that should reflect proper etiquette with no room for complacency. If you do this right you’ll never have to pitch.
Let’s go backward. If you are like me, you probably are more clear on the end goal than how to get there but, remember the only one rule concerning this. NO SKIPPING.
Goal #5 — Reward, renew, repeat
Do everything you can that won’t cause you to go bankrupt and will make your customers believe that no other solution can exist unless you create it.
- So ask for their usage information and share the impact your solution has had for fellow customers. This shows that you care, and it makes you a great host of their time and money.
- Then ask for the repeat business. If they say no, politely ask why and give them the option to not answer. Address their answer(s) and ask again.
- Reward your customers with loyalty offerings and public thank-yous and welcome to the inner circle type of messages that promote cohesion between customers. Pay them if you have to, just remember to budget for it.
Goal #4 — Ask to host their money with three yeses
I mastered this during my days as a direct selling sales representative. This can be digital on an upsell page.
- Educate on the value of your solution. Not your solution. It’s value. This is the benefits talk to confirm that they need these benefits either by listening to why they want “it†or by asking directly.
- Evaluate why your solution is better for them. And I mean that as a double entendre. Do it for them and show that the evaluation is based on their personalized and specific needs.
- Let them know what their choices are. Buy now or later.
Three yeses are all you need, so only provide information pertaining to that. Any more and you could be talking/writing yourself out of the know-like-trust space you worked so hard to get into. If you don’t get the third yes, try the following.
- Introduce genuine urgency if and only if necessary.
- Eliminate risks/handle common objections before they come up and if they want to buy now.
If it’s still a no after that. Move on and live to sell another day. when the time is right for them, they will solve this problem and if your product/service truly is the best, s/he will come.
Goal #3 — After you’ve talked about their problem, say you solve it…
This is where lead magnets and subscription pages can start to come into play. This is where you get the permission to sell. Ask for a micro commitment in the form of email or phone number so you can share the solutions which may or may not include your product. Needless to say, if you don’t deliver high enough value or don’t deliver at all this will hurt your reputation and they will not trust you easily ever again. Accountability and honesty are key.
Goal #2 — Get your people to know, like and trust you
- Talk about the problem in a way that makes people immediately pay attention to you as if you had called them by their first names or sound like their BFF when they complain about said problem. People have to feel that you are one of them. That you “feel them†and they feel you get it. This signals to them that yes, this is about him/her or that friend of theirs and that the solution you’re about to talk about is needed now. This is how you get the soft permission or the “tell me more†to…
- Then talk about the vision/benefits in a way that makes their pupils dilate. If they are not watering at the mouth, figuratively or otherwise keep trying until s/he is. Stay here until s/he literally asks for more through body language, clicks, scrolls or comments.
- Ask for a micro commitment for concrete permission to market to them. Any form of engagement to signal that they know, like and trust you and either want more information about you or the problem. This is usually a comment, feedback or a “like†which is proof that you have the permission to entertain & educate them by inviting them to like your page and follow you. This is not the permission to sell.
Goal #1 — Get to know your people
Entertain and Educate people about the problem/solution. If you do this well enough, your ideal target audience will reveal itself. This step is crucial because this is where customer discovery and investigative marketing happens. If you do not know any of the following for your ideal customers, you haven’t done enough of it:
- Specific pain: why your problem that you are trying to solve is important to them. How often it happens. What they already know: financially, emotionally or socially cost, available solutions and why they suck
- Unique qualities: physical, professional, demographics, hobbies and identifying behaviors (how often they travel, how they shop etc…)
- Consuming Behaviors: Where, when and how they learn (crucial to know for selecting content format)
The same principles apply when you're pitching by the way. Check out Ryan Foland’s talk on how to do this without turning people off. Again, if you do this right, you won’t be pitching. you’ll be providing bite-sized information through a conversation that will leave people wanting more.
How to execute on these without pissing people off
Using inbound marketing tactics doesn’t guarantee that you’ll never irritate some people. In my opinion, people are more reluctant to give their contact information because the etiquette around inbound marketing has not been emphasized enough and marketers have been ruining it. So be human and speak to the individual. Don’t be rude and create content made for the human mind.
The Skill and Tools
The be an effective marketer, you’ll need three skill sets on your team: distribution, creativity & storytelling and writing.
Distribution through Advertising & Social media management
Social media is where most people are or at least enough people that are representative of your ideal customers are. It’s also the perfect measuring tool as well. If the content that talks about benefit A gets more likes or shares than the content that talks about benefit B, benefit A is more important to your audience. Also, this is the distribution side of the equation. If you create content but don’t distribute, you are the tree that fell in the forest and made no sense.
Start with Facebook and get good at planning your advertising campaign. The best article I read for this was the 6 steps to creating a full-funnel advertising strategy with Facebook objectives. Also, I recommend the social media mastery course which will allow you to take the planning concepts from Facebook and apply it to any social media platform.
Creativity & storytelling.
Given the variations of your ideal customers, you need to repurpose your winning content in alternative formats that are more engaging for them. A well-written blog post might do well on Medium but if a significant portion of your audience is on Instagram, you’ll have to recreate your blog post as an infographic or a video.
Pro tip: don’t create any content that isn’t winning in written format or when spoken to an ideal customer. Follow the content marketing complexity ladder:
6. Audio and Video
5. Webinar/Podcast
4. GIF/slideshow
3. Drawing/pictures/infographic
2. Writing
1. Conversation in real life
Content Fundamentals
Depending on how much your audience knows about their problem and existing solutions (yours included), you need to either entertain, educate, convince or inspire them with content that is organized, informative and emotive in a format that suits them.
Writing
Not just any writing. Copywriting… for the speed readers.
Pro tip: deliver on your headline first, then convince your reader/listener why they should read more.
Try CoSchedule headline analyzer
Emotive — whether it’s entertaining because it’s funny or scandalous or if it’s just an inspiring story, people remember their emotions; how you made them feel more than what you did. This is how you create content that immortalizes you in people’s minds.
Different people at various steps will require different stories that differ in the emotional mix.
Emotions can be described by polarity (positive or negative), intensity (high or low), and enabling (fight or flight). More commonly known as valence, arousal, and dominance respectively.
Keep in mind that positive tone and generally happiness-inducing stuff generally has 4x higher engagement because it’s higher in arousal than stuff associated with negative emotions; even though the latter is remembered 5x longer. This is why the internet is full of cat videos but we all remember the turtle and the plastic straw. That video was extremely high in dominance because, within a few months, every restaurant I went to after that video went viral was serving biodegradable straws. That video was emotive; not emotional.
So remember dominance is associated with action, arousal with engagement and valence with memory
Informative— by teaching people, you are empowering them. An uneducated customer may choose you by chance or reputation but am educated customer will reduce your customer audition cost by spreading the knowledge for you.
Organized/optimized — if the flow is off, you’ll lose the reader. Get them to focus first. Then relate, then deliver information with suspense to keep them wanting more.
What other tools should you use
First, find out what content format you are great at or get 1–3 people who can create it in the format the best suits your audience. Even if you outsource the creative side of it you still have to get to know your customers. I know I mentioned this before but it’s crucial because you need to meet your audience where they are in the beginning. Be it Facebook, Reddit, conferences, trade shows or the comment section of an eCommerce site.
Use the Social Media Quiz by Einstein Marketer to figure out which social media platform you should use aside from Facebook.
The following are tools and services that I’ve used unless otherwise stated.
Writing: I keep it free and simple. Google docs for the first draft (I learned my lesson). Grammarly + Medium for second/final. I’m considering rev.com to turn winning videos or webinars into a blog post when I get to that point but I’ll try playing the audio or video on a device and use the speech-to-text feature on my phone. I’ll have to put all of the punctuations in afterward but it would save a lot of time and should work best when it’s my own voice.
Drawing/pictures/infographic: Google slides, canva, inkscape, remove.bg, +5MP Camera (aka my cellphone), meme generator and various websites for free stock photos.
Sidenote: keep your infographic short (the 7 plus or minus 2. More on this later), include your branding, use as little words as possible.
Slideshow/slide deck: use the native carousel feature or post the slide deck itself (PDF or SlideShare format). Here’s a great example by Gary Vaynerchuk.
Video: Lumen5! I can’t stop talking about this because as soon as I had a winning copy, I turned into a video for an ad that got $0.09 per click. If you’re recording yourself, place the bullet points of what you’re going to talk about directly under the camera lens (before or during the video) or do a video call with someone who is going to hold up these cards.
Audio: record yourself while you are doing the video and/or convert the video into an audio file with online converter.
Check back later for the following:
Webinar: I’m using freeconference.com, for now, to get competent and consistent enough with this format before I invest in tools with deeper analytics and automation.
Podcast: depending on your network, this could take longer to execute. Test how well your audience will receive this by being a guest on an existing podcast before investing time and money into equipment to create your own. This is actually what I’m currently doing so I can’t recommend any specific tools or hardware for this yet.
Minds and Measures
Last but not least, it’s very important to be data-driven and validate every assumption with likes, shares, clicks or conversions.
Marketing is an art. And art is a very subjective thing but there is a science to it which is based on psychology. Here are the key concepts that I learned in psychology courses at WPI (yes, they have a psychology program; and even a lab which is one of the best in the country) and as a sales representative.
Primacy and recency — Aside from how you make them feel, your audience will remember the first and last things more than anything thing else.
Reciprocity — As social creatures, we have an innate need to do for others that have done something for us. This should never be used for manipulation because we can sense that and it takes away from that feeling of surprise and gratitude when nice gestures are reciprocated. So give without expecting anything in return but be prepared for the returns.
Completion — That Buzzfeed article full of dot-dot-dots and cliffhangers is written that way for a reason…it’s because anticipation and completion are part of the Angel’s Cocktail and it combats our notoriously short attention span.
Memory — According to world-renowned Psychologist Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin, 7 plus or minus 2 is the capacity of short-term memory with a duration of about 15–30 seconds. Couple that with the 9-second attention span and you now understand why it’s so difficult to effectively communicate with people let alone be memorable. This is why creativity and agility are crucial. This is why marketing is hard.
Learning how to speak to your audience takes time and a lot of tests. So post regularly and use the Social Media post optimizer by CoSchedule for your shorter messages. Watch what your users do on your website(s) with MouseFlow or Hotjar (affiliated link alert and thanks in advance). Be Patient, measure your content’s performance and repurpose the winning ones.
If you have found/used any other tools that pertain to this article, please give them a shoutout on ProductHunt or mention them in the comment section. I hope this helps!