Marketing is one of the most important and critical elements in business. Marketing refers to a number of actions that a business undertakes to advertise the sale or purchase of a particular product, service, or item. Marketing is also known as the promotion of products and services by way of the media, consumers, and other businesses. These businesses engage in marketing activities to get the attention of customers, which leads them to make a purchase or enquiry.
There are three distinct types of marketing: Advertising and Marketing, Recruitment Marketing, and Integrated Marketing. Advertising refers to the promotional activities undertaken by businesses to publicize their products and services to potential consumers. These activities include the provision of free samples, discounts, and other forms of incentives to prospective consumers who will then make purchases. Advertising is often conducted through various media, including newspapers, magazines, television, and the internet. Recruitment marketing involves recruiting qualified candidates for specific positions that require knowledge of specific products and/or services offered by a business.
There are three basic elements involved in marketing: Identification of the market, creating a need, and offering a solution to the needs identified by the market. The identification of the market is the process of discovering what consumers actually want, how they want it provided, and how they are currently getting it. Creating a need involves answering a question that will provide the solution to a consumer’s need.
Marketing strategy involves using one or more marketing tools to attract consumers, such as advertising, reputation management, and networking. Social media marketing includes the use of social media to enhance the relationship between businesses and consumers, including building fan pages on popular networking sites. In addition to social media, marketing strategies may include pay per click campaigns on search engines, email campaigns, and promotions on popular websites. Marketing incorporates many different channels and strategies to reach potential consumers.
This is the process of determining your target market. Your target market is the population that you intend to communicate with through your marketing strategy. The marketing strategy will typically be designed to identify your target market, but it can also be designed to cater to an individual customer’s specific needs. For instance, if you sell maternity clothes, you may not want to advertise specifically to single women because everyone who is pregnant is not going to be interested in buying maternity clothes.
Marketing strategies are typically broken down into two categories: Individual and Collective strategies. The individual marketing strategy is designed to meet the needs of the company, while the collective marketing strategy is designed to meet the needs of the entire organization. The collective strategy is less rigid than the individual marketing concept because the end goal is to meet everyone’s needs. An example of an individual marketing concept would be a campaign to distribute brochures to employees at the work place.
Exchange of Offers is a marketing concept that places the consumer-seller relationship at the center of marketing activity. Exchange of offers, also known as customer loyalty programs, place the consumer first within the marketing strategy. The idea behind exchange of offers is to build long term customer relationships, which is a much stronger strategy than simply marketing to the masses.
Digital Marketing Strategies falls between the earlier-mentioned categories. Digital marketing strategies tend to refer to any online marketing strategy, including social media, content marketing, SEO, and search engine optimization. Digital marketing strategies are often used as a complement to the other strategies. A social media campaign for example, could be complemented by a search engine optimization campaign.