SEO Marketing 101: Understanding the Fundamentals To Grow Your Business
Marketing 101: Ready To Learn Everything About It?
If you’re looking for a complete guide on marketing 101 and how you can use these marketing strategies for your business, then you’re in luck!
Because today, we’re excited to give you an introduction to the wonderful world of marketing.
What Is Marketing 101?
The Marketing Mix
Before we get into more marketing specifics, like types of marketing strategies, let’s check in with the basics.
If you’re like us, you probably thought that marketing is just the advertising part, like the copywriting, the graphics, the campaigns.
You probably have a vision of Don Draper pitching an idea to a room full of suits sitting around a table.
Honestly, the Kodak Carousel pitch lives in our mind rent-free, but let’s get back on topic!
The advertising part is one of the last pieces of the puzzle, in actuality.
Let’s look at the foundation of marketing a physical product, which uses the 4 Ps:
- Product
You probably started thinking about your product before you filled out forms to make your business official.
Your product is whatever product, item, or service you’re providing.
This would include any enhancements to existing products, like version updates in apps or improvements in product design.
Your branding falls under this category too, because it includes things like packaging and labels.
- Place
This refers to where folks buy or interact with your product.
Do you have a store? What are your online channels?
Do you need to be in specific places in person or online to reach the right people?
- Price
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
What is the value of your product or service?
Do you have established price points? What discounts can you give? Are your customers sensitive to changes in pricing?
- Promotion
This is what most people think of when they think marketing.
This is getting the message out to your audience.
Is there seasonality to your business? When is the best time to promote?
What do your competitors’ promotions look like?
Three more Ps were added in 2017 by Dave Chaffey, and they address the increasing prevalence of service and experience-based marketing:
- People
Your initial thought may be that this refers to who you’ll be targeting.
But this foundational principle actually applies to people in the business, which means anyone who interacts with customers in any way.
This includes your company culture, which you can weave into every facet of your marketing efforts.
- Process
This is how your product, service, or experience is delivered to your customer.
And it’s an important piece of the puzzle.
This includes response times to comments, emails, and calls. As well as how your team handles any customer conflicts, complaints, or issues.
- Physical Evidence
This refers to the sensorial experience of your audience when they interact with your brand or product.
It includes packaging, physical space, of course, and in-store displays, but also includes smells associated with your brand.
Remember walking past Abercrombie and Fitch on a Friday night with your friends? We bet you can smell it right now.
And it also includes things like user stories and recommendations from others.
Good or bad, physical evidence affects your customer’s opinion of the product, service, or experience, and can either encourage or prevent a repeat purchase.
The marketing mix is the bedrock foundation of all marketing efforts.
Whether you’re conscious of it or not, each should be considered as you create your marketing 101 strategy.
Are These 7 Ps Even Relevant In Marketing 101?
We’re so glad you asked.
We wanted to cover the 7 Ps first because these all work together to decide whether your promotion phase will be successful or not.
We’ve found that many small businesses focus so much attention on what’s not working in promotion…
…that they forget that there are other categories that could be holding the ads back.
That’s why this foundational piece is so important in marketing 101.
Sometimes you’ll have to look candidly at your product, or offer, or price and say, “this needs to be improved so my ads can perform better.”
So now that you understand the foundation of marketing 101, let’s talk about marketing strategies.
Marketing 101: Steps On How To Develop A Marketing Strategy
Step 1: Developing a Marketing Strategy
Step 2: Researching Your Target Market
Step 3: Create a Buyer Persona
Step 4: SWOT Analysis
Step 1: Developing a Marketing Strategy
In marketing 101, you need a good strategy to be able to:
- figure out your messaging,
- choose where you’ll promote your products, services, or experiences, and
- identify the right audience for you.
When developing your strategy, you’ll ask yourself a few questions such as:
- Who is your target market?
- What do you want that audience to do?
- How will you get them to take that action?
2. Researching Your Target Market
If you’ve been in business for a while, you probably have a good idea of who buys from you.
Or maybe you don’t and you’ve just gotten lucky so far. Or, you know you’re close to the right audience but just can’t quite nail it.
Or maybe you’re a new business and you really have no idea where to start. Let’s get into how to research your target market.
3. Create a Buyer Persona
It’s okay (and perfectly normal) if your buyer persona changes over time, or isn’t quite right to start off with.
The goal here isn’t to create the perfect buyer persona on the first go, but just to help you get started with identifying your target market.
