I'm curious on everyone's idea of what they think it means when someone says they need or want marketing help. If you hired someone to do marketing, basically what are you thinking they'd be doing for you and your company?
I'm curious on everyone's idea of what they think it means when someone says they need or want marketing help. If you hired someone to do marketing, basically what are you thinking they'd be doing for you and your company?
Traffic, maybe a better advertisement system, and some more traffic
Assuming I am hiring someone to market my site/product I'd expect them to provide the following:Originally Posted by Bec
1. Provide in depth analysis of existing traffic
2. Point out weak SEO pages / misused terms / underused terms
3. Examine / Recommend other traffic sources
4. Examine / Recommend advertising venues
5. Examine / Recommend branding tactic used / not used
6. Analysis of site navigation & its clarity or lack of
7. Examine / Recommend pricing structure
Personally before you can 'market' somethng, you should know something about it. What has been tried and to what success or lack of. If lack of, why needs to be answered. The product or whatever is being marketed has to provide answers to, so should be looked over very carefully.
I think before you go out and start any campaign or such, you need to examine why a site/product isn't doing well, or why not as well as it should.
my 2 cents
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See, now that, to me, isnt what a marketer should be doing at all LOL
To me, what you mentioned above is what a traffic manager / director should be doing with the exception of #5.
Maketing wise, id be expecting someone to get my company or site name out there and get people talking about our various brands or products in order to get brand recognition and, ultimately, sales however, brand recognition would be the ultimate goal of a marketing person.
Of course, if you hire a marketing person, realistically, you also need to have a sales person on board to otherwise, their marketing efforts will have gone to waste.
One person to provide the leads, via marketing, another to process those leads and turn them in to actual sales.
Also, there is somewhat of a grey area in the adult industry as to what actually constitues 'marketing' to many 'board whoring' IS marketing when, the reality of it is, that isnt marketing, thats branding (which could be arguably defined as marketing on its own).
The best way to think of marketing imho, is telling someone why they need something in their home or, on the web (in our case) what features does something have, what are the benefits of those features and, where they can find the product being marketed at which point, the sales person or system takes over in order to close a sale.
Marketing, when done correctly, can lead end-users to recognize a product (or service) with the sight of a logo or slogan, for example..
Im pretty sure everyone reading this thread will know what company and products that is the logo for. The reason we know is because their marketing team did a good job at ensuring we remember their brand name or, in this case, their logo.
Regards,
Lee
True, but... while I agree that to market something they have to get out there, they have to know too what they are marketing and what tactics to use... you can't do that effectively if you don't know what you are selling... or choose a strategy if you don't know what has been done or not done...
Nike doesn't just run ads... they research first, test it in limited markets, then either they run with it or toss it and start the process all over again... They also examine why one campaign worked better than another, if it was the product or the advertising.. you just don't hire someone who automatically goes out and sells the stuff, that's a salesperson's job. THe marketing pro has to have done his/her research first... isn't like you just go out and buy a GM because the salesman told you to.
Marketing just isn't selling or advertising.. not effective marketing anyhow.. imho.
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Right but, it isnt a marketers job to 'sell' a product so, for all intents and purposes, they really dont have to know what the product can (or cant) do because all they are doing is marketing it. Its the salespersons job to do the selling and close the sale, because of the efforts of the marketer making the consumer think they might need the product or service.
The person who does all that, isnt a marketer though, its a market researcher, they are the ones who test how viable the launch of a specific product will be in any demographical area. Upon completion of the research, the company will then set the marketers loose on the general public.Nike doesn't just run ads... they research first, test it in limited markets, then either they run with it or toss it and start the process all over again... They also examine why one campaign worked better than another, if it was the product or the advertising.. you just don't hire someone who automatically goes out and sells the stuff, that's a salesperson's job. THe marketing pro has to have done his/her research first... isn't like you just go out and buy a GM because the salesman told you to.
Marketing, by its very definition, is the method used to deliver a message about a product or service which then leads the individual viewing that message to go out and purchase said product or service. However, you are correct, marketing ISNT just getting the branding. Its actually the whole package, from product to price, to placement and promotion.Marketing just isn't selling or advertising.. not effective marketing anyhow.. imho.
Anything after the promotion stage becomes the job of the salesperson.
Regards,
Lee
good ol' wikipedia
"The American Marketing Association suggests that Marketing is "the process of planning and executing the pricing, promotion, and distribution of goods, ideas, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals." Another definition, perhaps simpler and more universal, it the process of moving people closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow, refer, upload, download, obey, reject, conform, become complacent to another person's, society's or organization's value. Simply, if it doesn't facilitate a "sale" then it's not marketing.
However, the most widely accepted definition of marketing on a global scale comes from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) [1] in the UK, which is the largest marketing body in the world in terms of membership. The definition claims marketing to be the "management process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably". Thus, operative marketing involves the proccesses of market research, product development, product lifecycle management, pricing, channel management as well as promotion. However, marketing is more of a process-oriented cross function, not an direct decision maker in these processes. It is one of the company's management tools to ensure that products and services are developed according to market requirements, and that they are profitable."
Marketing people and sales people are different.
Dell Computers's marketing guys wrote their ad in PCWorld. But it is the dell.com website, or the sales rep on the phone who make the sale.
Don't fall down a symantic rabbit hole here. Obviously marketing for one sole proprietor is going to be a different activity then if Microsoft wants to market its new operating system. I think the word you want to apply to marketing is not "selling" but promoting.
And the marketer of the week for last week was Michael Lucas, hands down.
Steve
in a nutshell... creating the awareness and desire of a, or our, product/s.
Marketing is all about perception.
You know, the thing about the Nike logo is not that when you see the swoosh that you think "Oh, that's Nike". The important thing is that Swoosh = Nike = Sports. Take any logo, any name, throw money at it and eventually people will make the link that logo=company. But that's not that important. Associating a name to a logo is only the beginning. What's important is that BWM = luxury cars, Nike = sports, Bel Ami = cute young europeans. Positioning is often the foundation of an incredible marketing strategy.
What some people don't realize is:
1) A large portion of the marketing they see was not put there to do a sale. Sometimes it's to PREVENT consumption (smoking, consuming less electricity, etc), a lot of the time is to PREVENT post-buying cognitive dissonance (why do you think a lot of car companies are showing ads of their trucks in the moutains or whatever? It's not only to position the product and help a sale, but often primarily to make sure that the guy who just bought the truck feels good about his purchase.), a lot of the time it is to POSITION the company/product (again, Nike and sports) and sometimes it's only to hurt the competition. (Our competitor just opened a new store? Well, we'll do a huge sale in our store so that their numbers are skewed to complicate their post-opening analysis and PR potential.)
2) Advertising/Branding is not the only thing a marketer does. We also look at PR, distribution channel, consumer behaviours, product life-cycle management, and so on.
Anyway, I study/work in marketing so I'd have a lot of things to say about it but I'll let it to that for now :groovy:
Billaboy - great post
I think for our business, doing the research and presenting options how best to brand and what tools to get in place would be part of marketing, as well as evaluating what the program currently has, and providing some guidance on the best growth directions to take and the order of what needs done to get there.
The person(s) handling the phones, posting on boards, answering emails and carrying through on the branding concept would be the sales staff, and those making various advertising medium, whether it's sites they own and use for marketing, or building up the materials for an affiliate program gets relegated into design ... ie the freesites, fhg templates, banners, etc. Who handles the tedious part of doing submits, making galleries with the templates, keeping blogs updated, updating the site, uploading content, optimizing the photos etc ... is the grunt job guy, possibly part of the sales system, but not always.
I think for many that ask for "help" ... it's either a lack of staff to bring it all together, or a crew that doesn't have one person delegating who does what, or no clue about laying out a business plan, and usually it's all of the above.
Inspirational stuff!
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