There are countless ways for businesses to communicate with their customers. Marketing is undoubtedly the best method available to organizations.
This Marketing 101 guide will tell you everything you need to know to start marketing your brand and earning customers.
With Venngage’s graphic design for marketing, solutions businesses can leverage their marketing campaigns and gain a competitive advantage in the industry.
Click to jump ahead:
- What is marketing?
- What are some examples of an effective marketing channel?
- What are the marketing mistakes you need to avoid?
- FAQs about digital marketing strategies
What is marketing?
Marketing is the process of planning and carrying out the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of a business’ ideas, products, or service.
A marketing mix of great products, the right placements, prices, and promotion strategies are necessary for businesses to meet the needs and demands of consumers.
In simpler terms, marketing is the act of driving profitable customer action towards a business.
A marketing checklist, like the one below, helps businesses track and measure campaigns so they understand the impact they’re having.
Create a simple checklist to keep your marketing strategies well-coordinated and trackable. You can make your checklist look fresh and readable by incorporating modern color palettes.
Marketing is a key component that enables businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors in their industry.
But most importantly, marketing works towards attracting new customers, as well as increasing retention and reducing customer churn.
Improve brand awareness by incorporating your trademark elements across marketing visuals. Use the Venngage My Brand Kit feature to import your branding into the editor. Then apply it to all designs with a single click.
What are some examples of an effective marketing channel?
Every business needs to market its products and service to potential customers. The challenge arises with generating unique marketing ideas that will make you stand out.
The above template outlines numerous marketing channels. Since marketing plays a vital role in improving customer awareness about a business, picking the right channels can help companies sell their products and service.
Choosing the right combination of marketing channels for a business is crucial. It requires research, time, planning, and appropriate budget allocations. The following are some examples of the channels to use in the marketing mix.
Digital marketing
There are numerous digital channels available to companies. Search engine optimization (SEO) is high on the list. Choosing the right domain name is as crucial as selecting the appropriate marketing channels. The decision between a .com or .org domain extension can significantly affect your brand’s online identity and search engine visibility. This choice depends on your organization’s purpose, industry, and long-term goals.
It’s a great lead generation tactic that uses organic traffic from search results to build your audience base.
Alongside search engine optimization, you can also use digital channels to create gated content, like eBooks, and white papers, like the example below.
Marketing teams can create relevant content by studying the business’ target base. This will help them share exactly what audiences want to read about.
Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the top digital marketing channels with a high ROI or return on investment.
You can create a lasting personal connection with audiences when you show them that you care about the issues that are close to their hearts. Email marketing is the type of mass marketing and a powerful lead generation tool that can help you achieve this goal with your audience.
An email infographic is an example of the kind of messaging a marketing professional will use email marketing to share.
Generate leads, build your backlink profile and improve your training and onboarding process with this informative infographic on diversity terms.
Essentially, email marketing is the process of sending commercial email messages to your business’ subscribers to inform, drive sales, and build a community around your brand.
These email subscribers are the contacts who signed up to your email list and have given permission to receive email communications from you.
Here’s an example of an email that a real estate business could send to its customer base.
You can track and manage these subscripts through a customer relationship management (CRM) system or other all-purpose marketing tools.
Want to learn more about email marketing? Venngage has resources on email newsletter templates, email blast design, responsive emails, and email marketing tools.
Social media marketing
When networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram took off, companies saw them as a way to engage with existing buyers and reach new ones while allowing them to promote their desired culture, mission, or tone. LinkedIn automation, for example, allowed companies to unravel a whole new world of lead generation. With its advanced features and targeting capabilities, LinkedIn lead generation has become indispensable for businesses looking to expand their customer base and drive sales.
Social media platforms have become ubiquitous with marketing. They are widely used to market a company’s products and services or to share customer testimonials, like this visual post below, as well as for influencer marketing.
You can use this template to boost the readership rate on your social media posts by integrating visual elements like photos and icons.
Here’s an example of a simple visual that uses icons. You can share this post on Instagram or easily resize it in the Venngage editor for other platforms.
Venngage offers over 40,000 icons, including diverse people icons, so you can create social media messages that appeal to everyone.
Related:
What Is Social Media Branding? [+Tips to Improve]
10 Tips to Make Eye-Catching Infographics for Social Media
Billboard advertising
Inspire your audiences to join a cause, or to contribute to a movement by creating infographic posters for billboards. For businesses, templates such as this can also be used to promote your company, products, or services.
One effective way for building brand awareness and broadcasting your business to as many people as possible is through billboard advertising.
This is a marketing channel that uses large-scale print advertising to market a company, service, product, campaign, or even an event. It is usually placed in areas with high traffic from drivers and pedestrians.
Related: Poster Design Guide: How to Make an Eye-Catching Poster
Transit advertising
Another great technique to reach a wide audience is through transit advertising. When you market your business on buses, trains, and other vehicles, your company will be seen by people commuting.
Numerous marketing activities can be highlighted on transit, including new campaigns, events, products, and services, such as the example below.
This template will pop when applied to vehicles and improve your market coverage. The bright color scheme and icons make it stand out on a busy road.
Point-of-Sale advertising
Never miss the opportunity of using a point of sale to reach consumers in your marketing efforts. It can be a great way to ensure loyalty from your patrons.
This marketing channel touches on all efforts that increase sales at the point the purchase is actually made.
These could be marketing collateral that is displayed around the cash register and even on restaurant tables. Some marketing methods for point-of-sale advertising include the use of signages and receipts.
What are the marketing mistakes you need to avoid?
It’s better to learn from other marketing teams than make your own mistakes. Here are some of the commonly made mistakes to watch out for.
Assuming without proper research
Some businesses are quick to assume consumer preferences and the competitive environment that they are in, despite lacking any factual basis.
Build a marketing or business proposal, like the one below, that examines the industry and your organization’s place in it first.
Before assuming anything that could impact your company, conduct competitive research, like a SWOT analysis, first to know what would really click in the market.
Ignoring customer complaints
With the advent of technology and social media platforms, unsatisfied customers can vent their frustrations and complaints about your company in a few clicks.
Whenever this happens, it’s better to respond promptly to let both unhappy customers and bystanders know that you are open to criticism and will address problems right away.
One way to avoid angry buyers is to build a set of personas, like this user persona example below. This will ensure your message is right for your audience.
Another way to keep your consumer base happy is to create internal business reports that track the effectiveness of campaigns and products.
Treating customers impersonally
Never treat your customers as mere data. Each of them should be treated as an important person because they are. No organization would survive if not for consumers buying their products and services.
As such, they should be given the treatment they deserve. Address them by their name in email marketing and in person, thank them for their patronage and ask for their insights.
Related: 15 Visual Content Marketing Statistics to Know for 2021 [Infographic]
FAQs about digital marketing strategies
What are the five parts of the marketing mix?
The five elements of the marketing mix, or more commonly known as the five Ps of marketing, are:
- Product – the products and services that are offered by businesses.
- Price – the pricing strategy for products and services and its effect on customers.
- Promotion – the activities that raise awareness about the business to more consumers.
- Place – the distribution channels and ways to get a business’ product or service to its key customers.
- People – the people who work for the business. They are the variables that leaders control to satisfy customers in their target market. Staff also add value to their business, and help differentiate the company from competitors.
What are the 7Cs of marketing?
Aside from the marketing mix, there are also the 7Cs of marketing that are crucial to crafting a marketing strategy. These Cs are:
- Clients – Before creating a marketing plan, businesses should first research the target audience they want to focus on to find out about their interests and ideals. This will help align your strategies with their preferences.
- Convenience – Accessibility is one of the most important factors that will determine the engagement that your products and services will get. It is beneficial for your business to highlight the ease with which potential customers can engage with your company.
- Competition – Standing out and differentiating your company from others is also a vital part of an effective marketing strategy. Studying what your competition does can lead you to discovering issues that you need to improve on to better your business model and operations.
- Communication – Communication is one of the key features of a successful marketing strategy. Maintaining good communication will create a stronger company persona that will resonate with clients.
- Consistency – It is necessary for a business to be consistent with its brand image and tone across all marketing efforts to make it more recognizable to clients and ensure that the company stands out.
- Creative Content – Evoking people’s interest for your company will be easy when you produce creative contents. This will also help establish your business’s creativity and innovativeness.
- Credibility – You should always be able to build and maintain your credibility as an organization to reinforce your expertise in the industry. This aspect can greatly affect your long-term marketing strategy.
What are the four stages of marketing?
When working on marketing strategies for a particular marketing campaign, there are four stages of the marketing mix that you need to go through to make the entire process successful.
- Discovery – All about researching and performing a comprehensive market, customer, and competitive analysis.
- Strategy – Data collected from the first stage is put into effective strategies that will serve as your roadmap to success.
- Implementation – The implementation process where targeted marketing campaigns are put into action.
- Measurement – The last stage calls for an assessment of the implemented campaigns in order to be more effective moving forward.
Improve your relationship marketing with the right marketing tools
Marketing is the driving force of any successful business. It is a vital part of determining whether the venture is a success or a failure.
Using communication and advertising strategies, marketing persuades customers that your company, products, and services are the best.
With Venngage’s marketing solutions, any company can start designing visuals for its campaigns and earning new consumers.