Marketing 101: How to Get Started With Modern Day Marketing

Marketing has changed over the last few years, so it’s never a bad idea to have a little refresher.

If you took Marketing 101 in college, you might remember there were two major components of a product’s position in the market: Price and quality. In fact, these are the major differentiators that were recognized by traditional marketing theory.

Although digital marketing has upended many old-fashioned ideas, it still took a while for people to figure out what concepts should replace them – and exactly how marketing processes should change as a result. Many organizations are still in the midst of refreshing their approach.

Yes, price and quality (or, to look at it another way, features) are still vital aspects of what makes your offerings distinct. That said, online businesses are rarely successful campaigning solely on quality – and almost never find a sustainable position based on price.

In fact, two newer aspects of marketing have come to dominate modern methods.

Brand Values

Brand values are increasingly important for both B2C and B2B enterprises. In the B2B realm in particular, price and quality often provide only subtle differences between competing solutions. On the other hand, brand values define a promised experience that prospective buyers can imagine more clearly than things like, for example, your product’s convenient user interface.

Customer Experience

Modern customer experience goes well beyond what’s historically thought of as customer service. Companies should be prepared to offer a personalized, high-touch approach for fostering trust with decision-makers before a first purchase is ever made. This deepens brand recognition and makes it more likely that a firm’s offerings will make it to the final rounds of consideration.

A marketing strategy must encapsulate and communicate these two elements as well as the more conventional ones to truly create a clear and compelling vision in the buyer’s mind. The most effective way to do this – and move prospects through the buyers journey at the same time – is through the use of helpful and informative Web content.

Make Your Marketing Speak with Superior Content

You won’t find content marketing in most Marketing 101 textbooks, but it has become the way businesses communicate with clients. Content is the most visible part of inbound marketing, the modern approach to marketing that draws buyers by being informative and helpful.

Most marketing these days is found online – prospects can “take it or leave it” at their leisure. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that successful marketers adopt an inbound approach. That’s opposed to pushy and interruptive outbound marketing that tries to exhaust prospects into compliance.

Web content is the ultimate expression of inbound marketing. It’s there to be found, can easily be accessed at any time, and can answer prospects’ burning questions exactly when they need it.

Of course, not all Web content is created equal. To really align your digital marketing approach with today’s Marketing 101 best practices, you need to do some strategic planning before your first project – let alone your first concerted marketing campaign – goes live.

Build up your Marketing 101 chops with these steps:

Start by Understanding Your Prospects

Any marketing strategy starts with a clear understanding of who your prospects are. Both sales and marketing teams will gradually refine this knowledge over time. To start with, be sure you understand the burning questions prospects may have as they enter the awareness stage of a problem you can help them solve. This provides the kind of content that drives organic Web traffic.

Build Out Use Cases for Each Prospect

Combining burning questions, pain points, and demographic information will get you buyer personas you can use to craft your content. Use cases help you describe how a particular type of buyer thinks about your solution and how it relates to their ultimate goals.

One example is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. CRM suites can be used by sales, marketing, and many other groups within an enterprise. While the problems they are trying to solve are similar, each will have different goals and use different features.

When you segment buyers based on those “how and why” details, you get use cases.

By aligning your content with these specific cases, you can develop content that’s micro-targeted to each individual type of buyer, no matter where they are on the overall customer journey. The tighter and more accurate your segments are, the more your content will resonate.

Find Out Which Influencers Your Prospects Trust

When B2B buyers encounter a problem, they often begin their research with a generic online search. However, they’ll also have established ideas on what publications, platforms, and thought leaders are the most believable in their field. By positioning yourself to be seen in the right venues, you connect your name and brand with others who have a sterling reputation.

With digital marketing, the sky is the limit on how you can partner with allies in your space and adjacent ones. Display advertising is one method. Social media presents opportunities for you to share content directly with influencers who may spread it to their followers. The closer you can get to the feeling of a personal recommendation, the more powerful this will be.

Track Them Through the Journey

A mass of prospective customers is like the tiny particles discussed in quantum physics: It’s hard to tell where one individual is, but you can predict about where they’ll be on average. Using progressive profiling to gradually collect data from your prospects as they move forward will allow you to hone your content and make the average customer journey better. Naturally, you’ll want a good analytics suite across all your digital properties to collect and collate this data.

Today’s “Marketing 101” may seem complicated, but the time and effort you invest to overcome that learning curve will be worth it – in terms of qualified leads who are enthusiastic to try what you have to offer. Before you know it, the steps synthesize together into a repeatable and proven marketing process.