Marketing is all the activities an organisation does to build a relationship between itself and its consumers, according to The Balance SMB. Marketing pushes your brand, business and offering to a consumer through a variety of platforms.
Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing
There are two forms of marketing, traditional marketing and digital marketing. Traditional marketing channels include television, radio, newspaper, magazines, billboards and direct marketing and is what many of us are familiar with as advertising.
Digital marketing is done through the Internet. With people now constantly glued to their technological devices, it is no surprise that the internet is a great way to reach them. Digital marketing channels include performance, content and social media marketing, as well as SEO, affiliate marketing, lead generation, and many more.
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Using SWOT Analysis to Boost Your Marketing Efforts
When putting together a marketing plan, you must consider all factors, including both the external and internal factors that may affect your business. You can do this by conducting a SWOT Analysis.
Here is what to consider when doing a SWOT analysis
Strengths - The strengths look at what your company does well. The strengths are all the positive attributes of your business.
Weaknesses - Refers to what your company struggles with. When it comes to weaknesses, a business needs to take a critical look at what they are doing wrong and fix them.
Opportunities - Opportunities refer to your external environment. Businesses should take a look at the opportunities they can leverage in the external environment to reach their goals and grow their business.
Threats - Threats are all the factors that threaten the advancement of your business. They are all external and often you have no control over them. Identifying your threats can help you come up with a strategy to overcome them in future.
Once you have conducted a SWOT analysis, you now have to consider your marketing mix. The marketing mix will help you to define your product, pricing, place of distribution and how you are going to promote your business and the product.
The marketing mix
The marketing mix consists of the traditional 4Ps. The 4Ps were first defined by E.J McCarthy in his book ‘Basic Marketing - A Managerial Approach’ and are defined in his book as price, product, promotion and place.
Price According to the Global Web Index, the price has to reflect your target market. You need to decide what the price of your product is and whether your target market will be able to afford it.
Product The product is your offering to customers. According to the Global Web Index, the product must meet the expectations of the customer.
Promotion Neil Patel describes promotion as the channel by which customers find out about your business and the strategies you put in place to promote your offering.
Place The place is where the product will be distributed and where your customers can find you physically.
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