People don’t like to hear the truth when they’re learning about marketing and advertising. They want there to be a silver bullet, or some magic pill that will wake up a sleeping giant within and suddenly all of your strategies will flood you with money.
Understanding marketing is a long-term process filled with many nuances. You have to read and resarch. Become a passionate student.
If you want to understand marketing please start off by researching type face (fonts) and develop good style. This is a good first exercise.
Marketing is the process of getting your product known To a possible consumer and convincing them to buy it!
When you have a brick and mortar retail store your number one marketing tool is the store itself. You are paying rent to be discovered. And people who are out walking the streets are looking to shop. So in that case your marketing is your window, your sign, the merchandise, the appropriateness of the location for the product that you sell, the window displays, and all of the details that go into good retail… Go window shopping everyday. Study everything you can find and look at details. Make notes and take pictures.
The most important thing we have to concentrate on is having a great product. A great product ithat fills peoples primary needs will find its way naturally to the consumer!
I am not a marketing person so I cannot tell someone how to market a shitty product. I pride myself from my previous businesses on trying to be the best in my sectors. That was my number one strategy.
Now about graphics, logos design elements, etc., these things are actuallyy critical.You need to work with people who are awesome at it.
Subconsciously, everyone wants to be cool and feel accepted, desirable, and even perhaps like they have a chance of getting laid.
If your product makes people feel like they are trascending ordianry, immortal, lovable, in love, happier, empowered, etc,. you have a winner.
Traditionally marketing and advertisement firms recognize the three triggers that make people want to purchase. 1. sex, number 2. Humor 3. fear. (this is my own list, there may be more.)
If your marketing tactics contain one of these three things or a little bit of each, then people are going to react, provided the product is good!
The worst commercials we all know are injury attorneys, pharmaceutical drugs, and similar. Car insurance companies rely upon nonsensical and idiotic humorous things like a silly lizard spokesperson. Beer commercials always have to find a way to be clever and brilliant with comedy (not slip and fall prank humor, but more intelligent clever humor.)
If you want to be good at marketing then you have to make a list of all the things that you use as tools to market your product. If you’re in the retail business which I’m assuming if you’re reading my stuff that you are, all your marketing is happening in the retail store with how you merchandise.
The additional marketing in this information age comes from your online presence. Besides having a website. what other platforms are you using? Every business has to have some type of social media presence and have a following. The path to go from zero followers to hundreds of thousands is a very difficult challenge. Of course people get lucky and they hit the lotto and they go viral, But I wouldn’t count on that as a strategy.
Instead look at your marketing dollars and say, “how can I make my business better and how can I get people who influence other people in the actual physical world versus on the Internet to do buy things from me?” Can you entertain people in your business , throw dinner parties, have special events, use your marketing dollars to invite social media influencers to come, enjoy your product and talk about it to their following?
More specifically when you understand your demographic and their behavior, you could learn how to appeal to them and give them what they want. So another axiom for me in my mind is to really understand your consumer. One way to do this is to be in your stores and talk to everyone and ask people the same questions so you can formulate plans from the data.
If you were in the Juice business now, 60 to 70% of your audience is probably female. The first portion of your marketing process would obviously be female oriented with an open invitation to people are allowed to shopw with you as well.