5 Marketing Secrets to Success

Know The Factors That Lead To Marketing Success

In 2015, 60% of all U.S. internet activity came from mobile devices, and about half of the total internet traffic comes through mobile apps. Last year, content marketing generated 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing and cost 62% less.

Let’s just face the facts – business to consumer and business to business marketing has evolved and changed over the past ten years. Heck, even the past three years. Our modern, A.D.H.D. world snores at traditional marketing. The advertisement has to be extra “bling” in one way or another to keep one’s attention. While time and trends come and go, some things, however, still remain constant – the secrets to marketing success. Yes, it’s important to stay up-to-date with current events and technology, but there five marketing secrets to KNOW as one creates his/her marketing strategy each year.

1. Know Your Audience

There’s an important phrase in life which relates to your daily habits, but also to your marketing strategy – “Don’t Try to Please Everyone”. Trying to capture everyone’s attention to become a lead or customer will cause immediate disappointment and failure. If you’ve ever had this thought, please delete it from your brain now.

The key is to spend time researching who your target audience is. Once you figure that out, you will want to make this audience your best friend in the sense it’s up to you to learn EVERYTHING about this person (demographics, economical level, purchasing habits, daily routine, etc). After conducting surveys, interviews and research, it’s important to create buyer personas to represent and document who you are trying to target. Knowing exactly who you want to target influences your marketing content and your distribution channels through their buyer’s journey. The three phases of the Buyer’s Journey (Awareness, Consideration, and Decision) have their own, unique qualifications and rules that you don’t want to disturb, hence specific plans are executed for each phase.

At the end of the day, a customer will stay a customer if they feel valued and trust the company/product. Make sure this is at the top of your to-do list.

2. Know How to Connect

Maya Angelou is 100% correct when she said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” – she must have been a marketer at heart. People’s actions are based on their emotions – binge eating, yelling, smiling, laughing, or even buying a new car….which brings us to our next fact that 50% of purchases are based on emotion.

With this in mind, all marketers need to learn how to connect with their target audience. Using the research and buyer personas you created, you will learn how to best develop a deep and personal connection with your customers. This connection gives a purpose to them, which then leads to monetary action that benefits you.

Emotions can be reactions to colors, movement, framing, composition, environment, typography, and messaging. For heaven’s sake, emotions are even used in Facebook’s launch of the Reactions extension (you can now choose between “like, love, haha, wow, sad and angry” for a post). Most companies focus on one emotion they want their audiences to feel. Take a look at top companies like Nike, Apple, and Coca-Cola. All of their advertisement has an emotional meaning. Loyal customers that are emotionally involved will easily become natural spokespeople for your company.

3. Know Your Competition

Do you think Ronda Rousey enters the ring without studying and watching a film about her opponent? Do you think Stephen Curry just shows up to each game without hours of practicing or learning about the team is he about to play? The answer is a big, fat “NO”.

The third marketing secret is to know your competition. What are their rankings in the industry? How do they attract their customers? Where are they pushing content and how often? Understanding your competition establishes some benchmarks for your own company. Once you understand who you’re up against, you can develop a strategy to stand out and show why you are unique.

4. Know Your Goals & Objectives

The top marketing plans consist of setting concrete goals and objectives. How else are you supposed to measure success and failure? It’s important to discuss and record your goals, such as the lifetime value of your client, identify your desired and realistic cost per acquisition, conversion rate, the number of leads, marketing budget, etc.

In order to analyze these goals and objectives, you have to be a fan of big data. Numbers can sometimes be scary, but don’t let that hold you back from accomplishing your goals. Living in the tech-savvy age we live in gives us the advantage of having access to numerous analyzing tools – Google analytics, almost every social media platform has an analytical page and other free or paid tools.

5. Know How to Adapt

Are you reducing your traditional advertising budget to fund more digital marketing this year? Do you have someone to run your company’s social media? Or are you part of the 70% of marketers who are not confident in their ability to measure ROI on their mobile ad spend? News flash – our society is evolving. Constantly. With every tweet, every like, every click. We hope you have learned the past several years that the buyer’s journey is not linear anymore. There are endless ways to reach out to your customers. It’s up to you to sort through the fog and discover where your audience is and what appeals to them.

In a recent survey, content marketing resulted in being the marketing activity that will have the greatest commercial impact this year. Other top results include mobile marketing and big data. Something else to consider for your marketing plan is to increase the presence of customer reviews/testimonials. Today’s customers are more intelligent with their purchasing since they have access to any information with just a simple click. They research more and trust previous customer’s opinions. It ends up that 45% of online users rely on social media when making a purchase decision.

All in all, whether it’s sending a mail insert or promoting a Facebook post, it’s vital to always progress at the pace of your audience.

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter where you are in time or what company you’re working at or who your target audience is, these five marketing secrets are timeless and will bring you much success as you formulate your marketing plan. Nuanced Media is a premier Phoenix marketing agency, and our experts are always willing to answer your questions about hiring a new member of your marketing team.