Explore these 9 types of marketing to find the best one to reach your customers. Marketing is not a situation that suits everyone, but it requires adjustments.
All businesses must find a way to stand out in a competitive market. Whether you sell products online, own a local business, or run a B2B business, you’ll need to find the right marketing strategies to grow your audience, reach more customers, build brand awareness, and increase sales to increase revenue.
Marketing can help educate potential customers about your product or service offerings, facilitate them through the customer journey, and help you generate more sales. Not only does marketing increase brand awareness to let more people know about your brand, but it also aims to make the sales process easier for everyone.
If you want to sell your products and services, you need some form of marketing. If done correctly, marketing will help you sell more products while reducing other costs. Without marketing, many businesses would not exist because they cannot drive sales.
You can use different types of marketing to promote your business. Unfortunately, there is so much marketing talk about different strategies that it can be confusing and difficult to choose which method is right for your business. As a business owner or marketer, you must understand the different marketing strategies you have to determine what can help you sell more.
types of marketing
A brief history of marketing
Many may argue that marketing has been around for as long as commerce because people needed a way to sell their goods. However, marketing can be attributed back to the first printing presses and magazines. From there came other types of print advertising, including billboards. However, marketing has evolved along with technology.
For example, as television became more popularized and common in homes, so did advertising. Similarly, marketing continues to evolve along with technology as marketers find new ways to promote businesses. By now, you probably know other forms of marketing, including digital marketing, that have emerged as a result of computers, email, search engines, and social media.
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There are many different types of marketing, including the use of print and digital media, due to the evolution of media and technology. As technology continues to evolve, so does marketing.
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B2B and B2C marketing
When deciding which marketing strategy for a small business you should choose, you should consider your audience. There are 2 common types of business: B2B and B2C. Business-to-business (B2B) marketing requires businesses to market to other businesses, which may involve using a sales team to answer questions and drive purchases. Many B2B companies utilize relationships in their sales process to keep their customers coming back.
On the other hand, business-to-consumer (B2C) businesses must market to regular consumers. For example, Walmart markets directly to consumers through various forms of marketing and advertising. B2C businesses focus on a more transactional nature and can create marketing campaigns that focus more on emotion than logic.
Depending on the nature of your business, you may have B2B and B2C products and solutions, which means 2 different audiences you should target.
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9 different types of marketing
As we have already mentioned, with the evolution of technology comes the evolution of marketing, so there are many types of marketing to choose from. Depending on the nature of your business, industry, and customers, some types of marketing will be more effective than others.
It is also important to note that there are 2 broader types of marketing: traditional and digital. Digital marketing encompasses all aspects of digital. If you’re marketing to people online, through computers or mobile devices, that’s digital marketing. Digital marketing allows you to easily track and monitor your campaigns, eliminating all marketing guesswork to ensure you can optimize each strategy for the best results.
On the other hand, traditional marketing uses print and traditional media, including television advertising and billboards. Below you will find different types of marketing that fall into these two broad marketing categories.
Content marketing
Content marketing is an effective inbound marketing strategy that educates and engages customers by helping them find information about your product, brand, or industry online. Examples of content marketing include:
Blog
Organic social media posts
Electronic guide
Video
Content marketing aims to provide your customers with information they can use to make purchasing decisions.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is sometimes considered a small part of content marketing. However, many marketers believe that social media is a stand-alone marketing technique that deserves more attention. Social Media is a cost-effective marketing tool that can help you increase engagement with your audience, educate consumers, and sell more products.
There are many different ways to market on social media with different platforms to choose from, and some will be more effective for your marketing goals than others. Instagram Facebook for example, B2B businesses typically get better results on LinkedIn and Facebook than on Instagram and YouTube. Instagram Facebook meanwhile, more visual businesses, such as e-commerce businesses, are getting better results on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. However, you can reach your audience anywhere if you have a good strategy.
Influencer marketing
Some may consider influencer marketing as part of social media marketing, while others consider it a separate strategy. With influencer marketing, businesses can leverage the relationships influencers and thought leaders have created with audiences.
Because influencers are considered leaders in their industry, they have gained a level of trust that many businesses will never have, so their followers are more likely to listen to product recommendations. As a result, influencer marketing can help your brand gain more exposure, increase brand awareness, and increase sales.
Influencer marketing is commonly used in B2C, especially for e-commerce businesses. However, B2B companies can also take advantage of this popular marketing method if they find a thought leader in the industry with a large enough following.
Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing (SEM) includes any type of marketing that uses a search engine like Google as its marketing tool. Search engine marketing usually includes 2 digital marketing strategies.
Search engine optimization (SEO): have you ever wondered how your competitors rank highest in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs)? The answer is SEO, a marketing strategy that optimizes website content to help you improve your ranking in search engines.
Pay per click (PPC) advertising: PPC is another search engine marketing strategy that helps your business website appear in SERPs. However, your website will appear in the Paid Search Results section, not the organic results, located at the top or bottom of the SERP. PPC requires you to pay per click, while SEO focuses on organic traffic. Both are effective ways to bring more traffic to your website.
In recent years, SEM has become associated primarily with PPC, and SEO has become a strategy in its own right. So, if you are discussing options with a marketing agency, make sure you clearly understand the type of SEM they are referring to.
Any type of business can benefit from SEM because many people use search engines as their 1st stop when trying to research solutions. Therefore, B2B companies selling software and B2C e-commerce companies can use SEM to increase their reach and increase website traffic.
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Email marketing
Many companies use email marketing because it is so effective. Email marketing requires marketers to send emails to customers and prospects to increase sales and help customers through the sales funnel easily. With high conversion rate, high yield.
Public relations
Public relations (PR) is one type of marketing that can help build your business reputation in the media. Public relations build a profitable relationship between your company and the public through acquired media to manage the image and reputation of the business. Ultimately, PR aims to position your company or an individual from the organization as a thought leader in a particular industry, increasing brand awareness and trust among the public.
While all businesses can benefit from managing their reputation with the public, a strong PR strategy is best for large businesses that are often in the news. However, local PR can benefit local businesses if they have something newsworthy to share.
Print marketing
Print marketing is the use of print media to generate brand awareness about your company. Print marketing includes advertising in magazines, brochures, and billboards. Print marketing is not something you can measure effectively, although there are several methods to ensure your efforts are going well. For example, print marketing can promote your products or services in a small geographic range, or you can target national publications to gain more brand awareness in different areas.
Print marketing can be effective for any type of business. However, you should target the magazine carefully. For example, B2B businesses may choose to advertise in trade magazines, whereas B2C companies may target consumer magazines with a wider and less specific reach.
Direct mail
Direct mail marketing works similarly to email marketing, but instead of sending information to your digital mailbox, it sends printed material to your physical mailbox. Print snippets can contain much of the same information as emails, including CTAs and incentives. Unfortunately, direct mail may not be as effective as email marketing for your business because many people will think of it as junk mail and throw it in the trash without actually reading the information you send them. Therefore, your offer to the customer must be clear to make them take the action you want.
Direct mail is another example of a marketing strategy that can be used by any business. For example, a local spa might send letters directly to city residents to promote discounts, while a B2B company would send their letters directly to businesses rather than to residential homes.
Television and radio
Everyone has seen or heard of advertising. Television and radio advertising has evolved over time but remains an effective marketing strategy for businesses. Unfortunately, these ads can be expensive, so they’re not ideal for small businesses. If your business has money to spend, you have to be creative to get people to act.
Vary your marketing
While different forms of traditional and digital marketing are effective, you can use them together to increase brand awareness and increase sales. When deciding which marketing strategy is right for you, consider your brand and its customers. Your goal is to discover where customers are spending their time and how you can reach them.