What is Marketing?

If you are looking to learn more about what exactly marketing is and how to use it to your business’s advantage, you have come to the right place. In this article, you will learn what marketing is, the different types, and how to use it.

AMA Marketing Definition

The American Marketing Association (AMA) has experts in the field reevaluate its definition every three years. The current definition is “marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” As you can see marketing is made up of a variety of many different things. It isn’t a process that can be done quickly, but it is a process that if done right can create loyal customers.

good marketer

Why Marketing?

Marketing is definable as the things your company does to promote your product or service. This is crucial to any business, no matter the size. Everyone markets because it helps your company stay relevant. Marketing can be done through word-of-mouth communication or a well-thought-out campaign. Marketing should be driven by the audience. Listening to those who you aim to serve, can only benefit your business. If you have marketed in the past and have analytics, use demographics and other information to guide where you should go. This can be tracked without having launched a campaign as well. If your business has a website or social media presence, you can get a better idea about who your audience is.

Marketing helps…

  • Build brand awareness
  • Create relationships with your audience
  • Maximize profits
  • Levels the playing field for SMB

group marketing

What Does Marketing Include? 

Marketing is everything from the packaging to the advertisement. It is in all aspects of any business from beginning to end. The Four Ps refers to a product, price, place, promotion. These can help figure out the best way to market what your company has to offer. The four Ps are a method to use to help establish where your marketing can go. It gets your company in the conversation and mixes when customers think about where to spend their money. This method is also known as the marketing mix. This isn’t a one and done process. It should be relooked at to make sure the goals and audience haven’t changed or adjusted over time.

Product

This is the product or service your company offers to an already existing audience. If you have a product or service that is the first in the industry, then you can create the need for what you are selling to the customers.

Price

This is the price the customers pay for your product or service. When thinking about cost, many considerations are made. You want to make sure the cost of making the product is covered and that it can compete with competitors prices. Never let your item to look cheap or be cheap! You need to be smart with how you price your goods or services.

Place

This decides where you will sell your goods or services. You want to sell where your potential customers already are. If you do that, they are more likely to buy since they are already there. This is where target ads or SEO can help the right people find your business online.

Promotion

This deals with everything with promoting and selling your business. It allows you to find the right audience of people and tells them why they need what your brand has to offer. This is where marketing campaigns would be used.

The Four Ps are an easy way to look at what your company has to offer to see where it needs improvement. Once you figure that out, your business can start optimizing in the places it was lacking. If you don’t see any weaknesses in your company, then you have a good strategy in place.

Marketing vs Advertising

Although these two terms, marketing and advertising, are used interchangeably, they are different. Marketing targets specific customers to reach and build relationships with. It is a process of research, creating, designing, and implementing a campaign to better reach an audience. Marketers use advertisements when trying to reach customers, but marketing goes beyond advertising. Advertising uses paid channels to promote a good or service businesses have to offer. It helps people better know about the product or service your business is selling. In marketing, advertising would be in the implementation or delivering process. It is a tactic that can be used to help reach the goals of a company’s campaign.

Types of Marketing

Marketing has been shifting ever since the internet was born. Say goodbye to traditional newspaper and tv marketing because the marketing world has expanded. Marketing is no longer a one-way street of communication. Now, it goes both ways. Through every form of marketing, customers are wanting engagement with a brand to establish a better relationship.

Influencers

This form of marketing focuses on paying individuals who can target your audience to become potential customers. Influencers can be employees, customers who love your brand, famous people, or content creators. They typically have a strong relationship with their audiences which can help your brand see a big ROI. Influencer marketing can be tricky if you don’t contact the right people to promote your brand.

Relationship 

Forming a relationship with your customer establishes brand loyalty. To do this, you need a strategy to be able to know your audience. Marketing this way could target your audience’s behavior or other analytics to help nourish a relationship. Everyone knows having better relationships with a client means that they will be more likely to come back and bring their friends.

Viral 

This is an organic way to become known. Whether it is creating a video for a TikTok challenge or a funny tweet, viral marketing helps expose your brand. Creating content that becomes viral for the sake of being viral can be hard. This is because consumers can be unpredictable at times. If you are constantly posting quality content that stays true to your brand, that simple tweet could turn into something more than expected.

Green 

Just like it sounds, this type deals with the environment. Being green is something consumers are looking for. This can help differentiate your company. Green Marketing is designing a company that is environmentally friendly in the way they do business or create products.

ideas for marketing

Keyword 

Marketing using keywords is also known as SEO (search engine optimization). It uses words or phrases that users search for and allows for companies to be able to target a specific audience. Keywords can be used for ads, websites, and blog posts that are both organic and paid for to target your audience.

Guerilla 

Although this is unconventional, this can drive big results. It is commonly used to gain media attention or a positive relationship with customers. It uses existing content or products but adds something new to freshen it up. Guerilla marketing doesn’t have to be complex, but it does have to be creative and innovative.

More Ways to Market

Marketing involves many different aspects. In all of these, you can overlap and use multiple kinds of techniques at a time. These are changing all the time as the world keeps innovating, so pay attention to what other people are doing and make it yours.

The Two Approaches

There are two approaches to marketing. You can market business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C). It is important to recognize who you are targeting before you try and create a campaign.

  • B2B targets other businesses
  • B2C targets consumers

When deciding how you should market, know your audience. In the B2B style, a company typically markets to the logic of the other company. If you are using B2B, you tend to know who your specific audience is and know how they decide what to buy. When using B2C, most businesses turn to the emotional response of the consumer. There is overlap between these two, but up to your company to decide who your audience might be.

marketing

Spend More Time on What You Love!

Stop worrying about if your company is marketing right and leave it to the experts at SEO Design Chicago. Marketing is a part of every business, but it needs to be done effectively. We want to help your company put its best foot forward. We help find potential clients by targeting and using data-driven analytics to reach the maximum ROI possible. Spend more time doing what you created your business to do and spend less time on trying to create engaging content. SEO Design Chicago is ready to help you succeed.

FAQs

  • Are there purposes to marketing?
  • What are the main goals of marketing?
  • Some marketing mistakes to avoid?
  • What are different types of marketing?
  • How do I start to market for my business?

Contact Us Today!


Call Now