If you are new to business, you need to know that marketing can make or break your new business idea or concept, no matter how brilliant. There is a feeling that even when the word about your company is negative, it is somehow still good for your business because people are talking about you. As the saying goes, “Good press, bad press – it’s still press.”
The business world is full of examples that, contrarily, show how bad press hurts business. Believing that your marketing efforts will remain unaffected by bad press is a fatal mistake. Whether you like it or not, the press you generate is a part of your marketing efforts. You cannot ignore bad press hoping it will just go away. You have to make improving your public image a part of your marketing strategy. That is just one of the things every business needs to know about marketing. Here are a few more:
Effective Marketing Requires Deep Analytics
Marketing blind is a waste of marketing resources. You need to know a great deal about your product, the market, and competitive forces. Every print, radio, or television commercial you encounter is fine-tuned to a particular target audience and has a very specific message. Nothing about it is random.
Those analytics come from the kinds of products and services described at http://www.primary-intel.com/. Such companies understand the importance of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your product, and understand why it did or did not perform up to expectations.
If you do not understand your product, the market, and the competition, you will not know how to position your product to cut through the noise and achieve success. It could be the difference in choosing a blue background instead of green in your print ads that makes the difference. Don’t make the mistake of launching a marketing campaign without proper analytics.
Content Is King
Marketing is content. It’s video, images, ad copy, voiceover, and music. Content is not the thing you sell. It is everything you say about the thing that you sell. More to the point, content is everything you say as a company. It will all be consumed and judged by the purchasing public. Bad content hurts your business. Better content makes your business better.
Blogs are powerful content marketing tools. If your business sells widgets, you may not see the need for a blog to be a part of your website. But a blog is a way for you to communicate directly to your customers and potential customers about matters that are important to your business.
You can provide useful information that provides a better customer experience. You can vastly improve your SEO. Providing good content makes it more likely that your links will be shared on social media. In terms of marketing, there is no downside to investing in great content.
Great Marketing Is Current
Sometimes we look back on past TV ad campaigns and marvel at how old-fashioned and out of date everything seems. But that is only because we are looking at things through the modern lenses of our day. At the time those ads were made, they represented the social and cultural values and mores of that time. In other words, they were current.
Successful advertising has to be current, reflecting the cultural values and mores of our time. Same-sex relationships are no longer considered alternative or countercultural lifestyle choices. They are mainstream. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. The NYT reports a rise in single motherhood in women over 35. These are single mothers by choice.
Crafting a marketing campaign as if we still lived in the world of the Brady Bunch will have limited appeal, and do little to further your cause. If you can’t accept the fact that rap is the most popular form of music these days, and that football is America’s sport, not baseball, you probably shouldn’t be overseeing your company’s marketing campaign.
There is a lot to learn about marketing. And no one knows it all. But if you are new to business, make sure your marketing is based on deep analytics, worthy content, and cultural awareness.