Give Your Audience a Gift: Marketing 101

If we could just rewind to two years ago, one could easily measure the disparities that have come up in the business world. The trades and deals, the rising age of startups, and a more informed customer weren’t part of the economy then. The onset of the pandemic has brought a significant shift not only in socio-economic conditions but also in the growth mindset of businesses.

Every brand wants to be heard and seen by its target market, and it has led to marketing playing the protagonist in every business’s story. Marketing derived its meaning in 1897 when companies took a modern outlook of procuring their good and making them reach consumers through ads and sales. Today, the sales guy doesn’t knock door to door because the high-tech accessibility has made things easier but tricky.

In the current scenario, marketing works to sell and retain more loyal fans in the form of customers, and the revenue stream keeps flowing. As the industrial revolution opened the global trading system for businesses, consumers knew they could opt for any goods and services regardless of their geographical location. It led to a rise in competition amongst brands to bring out one perfect marketing idea and let the best win. Thus, consumers became more informed of their options.

Marketing has moved beyond businesses blatantly selling their goods/services to customers. It has got to make people aware of their choices, move them through emotions, glorify their needs less and speak practically more. Hence, the customer would reach the final stage of their buying decision.

Famous brands like Apple, Coke, Mc Donalds, and more earned worth millions of dollars in revenue with one strategic weapon— Marketing. They emphasized offering one true gift to retain the loyalty of customers: Sustainable brand building and relationship building with customers. This is what we call Marketing 101. Continue reading to find how you should practice making your marketing feel less transactional but more of a reward.

What is Marketing 101

Marketing refers to all those practices by a brand for deriving the audience to make a profitable decision. The profit is now more of a two-way factor— driving profit monetarily for Brands and beneficial for customers in terms of value for money and sustainability of the goods. The process has too many elements and phrases that have evolved due to technology's emergence.

Consumers now hold the power button, choosing to pause engaging with the brand digitally anytime they want. According to Deloitte’s Global Marketing trends 2021 report, the world is looking toward businesses to offer solutions. So marketing is now more about creating strategies that provide answers, and customers no longer respond to bland sales pitches. ?

Marketing 101 supports the idea that you cannot just create a product, launch it in the market and see the cash flowing rapidly inside your door. It is more about knowing what the market wants, developing strategies to make the offer sustainable, and promoting the product through meaningful relationship-building methods. Going by the words of Seth Godin,

Marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problems; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems.

When you resonate with people’s needs and the market’s wants, you would eventually have enough leads to convert into loyal customers. So here are some elements which would help every marketer remember to take the correct marketing route and offer customers a gift.

Emphasize researching the right audience more

Research in marketing starts even before the product development stage. One must know what their customers are looking for and map the market appropriately. Further, while promoting your brand or a specific product, you want to know the right audience.

For instance, if you are a B2B Digital marketing company helping small B2B businesses/startups scale their revenue, you can choose LinkedIn as a platform for generating content and networking. Many business professionals are active on the platform so you have a better chance of reaching your target customers globally.?

Identify the unique value proposition

Everyone is offering something better and sound, and every brand claims to be the right for customers. If you were a customer, you could easily smell marketing, and that’s why you should believe in being different and not better. Whatever goods/services your brand is offering, make it unique. There is a reason Apple stands apart in the mobile industry. It offered people a different operating system. Hence, people associate it with a premium quality brand compared to Android.

Get your strategy straight

Everything must be strategized under marketing, from posting a certain number of times on a specific social platform to the promotional offers from your brand. What color background your image has and how beautiful your font looks wouldn’t matter much if the strategy behind the written copy is crappy and aimless. Your marketing should be running on the fuel of a plan of action that includes guidelines for branding strategy, social platform, content format, marketing campaigns, product offers, and the entire sales funnel.

Relying on Emotions more than Facts

One of the Harvard Business school professor Gerald Zaltman explains in his book that 95% of a customer’s purchase decisions take place in their subconscious mind. It means emotions and past experiences drive them to buy or reject a product. So a brand’s marketing 101 should be based on leveraging these emotions and getting them to engage and buy from you.

You start by educating them at the top of the Funnel (ToFU) and invoke their interest by engaging with them empathetically on social platforms. Facts and statistics could certainly bore the audience. Remember, they are not market researchers like you and us.

Focus on your Branding Game

Corporate and Personal Branding are two different strategies in execution. A personal brand is relatively more straightforward compared to a corporate brand. You can leverage a personal brand for your company to get leads and sales, but a corporate brand gets you at a higher level networking hierarchy. Branding must be done right by developing a narrative, defining your brand’s consistent objective, what it is serving to the customers, and how they have benefitted from it? Build a sustainable brand and see the results.

Study your competitor

If you do not have competition in the market, you are not growing. As a marketer, believe in keeping a growth mindset that appreciates the presence of competitors because that is how you would be able to stand apart. Competition is a sign that your chosen market is vast and has the potential to help you generate revenue.

Mindfully Experiment & track your results

The majority of the brands believe in looking at their KPIs and developing plans of action based on what are the gaps that must be filled? A/B testing approach in Email marketing campaigns is how brands measure their success or failure. They continue to experiment with their call to action button, Email subject, word limit, etc. But aimless experimentation always shows doomed results. Understand what the market wants, and everything would become easier for you.

Focus on Retaining customers more than acquiring

Did you know that acquiring a new customer can cost you 5x more than retaining a customer? In addition to that, if you try selling a product or service to your existing clients, you can expect a success rate of 60-70%. It is similar to how your organization works.?

If you hire skilled employees and offer them rewards through incentives for their hard work, you would save yourself from high employee turnover. So next time you decide to run behind a new customer, make sure you serve the existing ones properly.

Be Customer-centric

According to Deloitte’s 2021 Global Marketing trends report, four in five people readily cited the brand's name that responded quickly and positively to their queries even during the pandemic crisis. Hence, it led to customers feeling brand loyalty towards their consumers. As a marketer, always remember that customers do not think as you think, and their goals are not like yours. So read their psychology, believe in offering a solution, make their experience with your brand memorable.

In a Nutshell

In marketing 101, the idea is to develop a plan of action with suitable methods which resonate with the customer’s belief system. Marketing today focuses on forging a brand and customer relationship where they strive to make the community better together. The marketing journey can be unpredictable, and that's why being consistent should be the strategy, and knowing your market well should be the ultimate goal.

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