Marketing is a broad field that involves many skills. While developing successful marketing techniques can take time and dedication, there are plenty of resources available to aid your efforts.
PLNU provides both undergraduate and graduate programs in marketing. Explore them to find what best meets your needs! In addition, enrolling in one of PLNU’s Bootcamps could give you all of the foundational knowledge about marketing that you’ll need for success!
1. Market Research
Market research is one of the best ways to ensure you know and understand your consumer base. It can help minimize risks early on in a business venture’s existence while making it simpler to devise an effective marketing plan that yields returns.
Are You Familiar With the Target Audience for Your Product or Service? Market research can give you an in-depth knowledge of who uses your product, as well as help determine its niche market place, as well as help you gain new consumers.
2. Competitive Intelligence
Gaining insight into your competitors is the cornerstone of competitive intelligence. From competitor profiles and sales battle cards, to other forms of analysis, it’s vital that you stay abreast of their latest information.
Gathering market intelligence requires time and dedication, but is essential to effective marketing knowledge. Doing this research can help you gain insight into competitors’ products, pricing strategies and more.
Competitive intelligence (CI) refers to the process of collecting and analyzing information on competition in order to gain an edge over it. Going beyond simply “know your enemy”, CI provides insight into marketplace happenings using both published and unpublished sources of information.
3. Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is an essential business measure that quantifies how well products and services meet customers’ expectations, as well as serving as an indicator for future purchases and customer loyalty.
Customers that are satisfied with your brand are its biggest fans and can help spread word-of-mouth marketing for new business to come in. Furthermore, happy customers will share positive experiences via social media to raise brand awareness.
Customer satisfaction requires input from every department. For instance, when customers report issues on Twitter about bugs in your app, make sure the dev team knows immediately so they can fix it as soon as possible.
4. Social Media
Social media is a form of technology that allows individuals to communicate online in real time. This encompasses platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and LinkedIn where users can exchange ideas in the form of texts, images, video files or any other multimedia forms of content sharing.
Social media provides businesses with access to the largest addressable market online and gives them an opportunity to market products and services while sharing expert opinions on topics relevant to them.
Marketing executives must understand the intricacies of social media platforms to use them effectively in their promotional strategies, creating policies for use of company resources by employees and training them on proper use.
5. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a form of promotion designed to engage customers and expand the brand through providing useful information. It takes many forms such as blog posts, email newsletters, ebooks, case studies, testimonials etc.
Content marketing success begins with setting clear goals and having an understanding of who your audience is. For instance, when targeting high school students with your content assets, their attention spans tend to be short so the lifespan should be kept short as their interest wane quickly.
Conversely, educational content directed towards businesspeople could have a longer shelf life and could even be shared by your audience for years afterward.
6. Web Design
Web design is an integral component of digital marketing strategies, creating a powerful first impression with audiences and helping turn them into customers.
Web design requires striking a delicate balance between aesthetics and functionality, since an attractive website that lacks essential features will fail to attract customers.
Web designers must keep themselves up-to-date with the latest marketing trends to remain competitive in their work and understand how different strategies impact website performance. By being aware of these factors, designers will make more informed decisions when designing sites to enhance the user experience and deliver an optimal user journey.
7. Customer Reviews
Customer reviews allow shoppers to interact with your business and can serve as social proof that can reassure potential buyers when making purchase decisions. Reviews can also help businesses identify areas for improvement.
Businesses benefit from gathering insight on what needs to remain the same and what should change to meet target market expectations. For instance, if an area of your business keeps receiving negative reviews, perhaps now is an opportune time to make some alterations.
