Marketing Basics You Need to Know
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If you’re venturing into the world of marketing, you might feel it’s an intimidating endeavor. As a discipline that has accelerated dramatically over the last half-century, there is a lot of marketing to catch up on, but the basics are easy to grasp.
Market Segmentation
Market segmentation is essentially dividing a potential market into groups of individuals based upon what they have in common. The theory behind market segmentation is that different people buy things in different ways, so if you segment them together you will be able to more accurately build a product for them, as well as market that product to them. There are different types of market segmentation:
- Geographic – this is a common type of segmentation that you will do naturally purely due to the reality of your project. You can’t market to everybody in the world, so you segment the markets. If you were selling an alcoholic product, it would be a waste of resources to market to a halal country, for example. If you have data about demographics, you can geographically segment based on those – e.g. an area is host to young trendy people — just the target market for your product.
- Demographic segmentation – there are loads of datasets that tell you about the demographics of a certain area or user. These demographics will share things in common (e.g. those aged 70+ are less likely to use the internet).
- Price segmentation
- Distribution channel segmentation
- Lifestyle habit segmentation
A Systematic Process
It can be tempting to market based on your natural intuition, but marketing should take a systematic approach. The Gist People have a 5 point process for marketing and communication:
- Idea – the strategy, what does this campaign need to achieve? Do you want to be more known, drive customer loyalty, increase brand equity, sell more products, etc.
- Concept – fleshing out the idea as the strategy is selected and its intricacies are developed
- Design – designing the campaign, bringing the concept to life
- Develop – developing the campaign from the design, making final touches and also perhaps developing the architecture from which the campaign will be delivered (e.g. content, website, app).
- Launch – launching the campaign and, more importantly, measuring everything afterwards so the campaign can be amended in real time to help generate more sales.
Brand Equity
Brand equity is what you are looking to capture with your branding work. It can be easy to believe you can make a good brand with just your aesthetic taste, but brand work is important because it can increase brand equity. Brand equity is the added value that your brand gives your customers. That means having a well thought-out brand can make your product more profitable. Many companies make very cheap products but have such a good brand that customers pay a lot of money for it. Nike shoes cost about $25 to make in a factory yet often sell for $100-200 due to the power of the Nike brand. Your brand work may use brand archetypes, but it should be a strategically thought-through development based on your target market.