The advertising and marketing fields are very different from what they were 100 or even 50 years ago. Marketing was spending enough money on ads and that equalled profits. Marketing models have changed in the last decade. THe lecturer for this class states 11 questions to consider for marketers:
1. What is marketing for?
Its no longer goods plus money equals marketing and advertising. Now, “the act of marketing is telling a story to people who want to hear it, making that story so vivid and so true that the people who hear it tell other people.”
2. What are we allowed to touch?
Can the marketer change the product, the manufacturing, etc? Marketing teams should be in control of tweaking and better the products, logically speaking. You should understand what you are able to change within the dynamic you sign up for.
3. What can we measure?
“Tv is totally unmeasurable”, he states. It’s hard to measure a true consumer response rate, not everything can be monitored and quantified.
4. What can we change?
Internal product change, external changes, can you change peoples perceptions and wants? Not all marketing is necessarily about changing the consumer.
5. What promise are we going to make?
To the client, the customer – marketing is making a promise you can keep, and hopefully exceed the promise.
6. What’s the hard part?
Shelf space, visibility, competition…What is the biggest obstacle?
- Should we make trends or follow trends?
- Where is the risk?
What personal risk as a marketer are you taking? What risk is your brand taking in making the promises it does? What risk is there to the customer?
- Who is in charge?
Who says yes or no, and who is responsible?
- What is the money for?
Marketers spend money. Where are you spending it, and what is it for? New media is replacing old media, using a different way of spending money.
- How should I be spending my time?
Don’t be reactive and lose your ability to continue your own agenda and spend your time on what is valuable.
Action Theory of Marketing
Components:
Emotions
A product or service for sale is likely something people want, not need. Satisfy wants – unless you are actually satisfying needs, like basic water, food, or shelter, which few marketers are spending their careers on. Are you trying to invoke delight, or fear in the consumer to compel them to feel they want their product? People don’t trust marketers because of false promises. “Which emotion do you want to invoke and in whom?”
Change
What powerful organizations do is cause people to change. Apple is the example Godin uses here, as they have changed the perception of consumers of technology, how to use it, what to expect from it, what it should look like.
Alert
How do you keep a relationship with people, how do you build the permission to create that relationship? Amazon is the example Godin uses, as they have the trust of their consumers to keep them in the loop and who allow themselves to receive consistent communication from the company.
Share
Set aside TV – what about person to person sharing? People sharing your products story, emotion, with other people. Products can change the way you feel about yourself.
The P List
Positioning: Is our product in someone’s mind? You can’t usually force your product into a prime location in someone’s mind – “Your goal is to find a niche and fill it, to jump into someone’s mind next to similar products. Where do you position yourself?”
Pricing: A lot of people fixate too much on pricing, there isn’t a routine formula. We don’t pay based on the cost of manufacturing, we pay based on worth and value, which is all based on perception. Godin uses Leica as an example, stating the people that use these cameras do so because it matters to them to have the most expensive camera that signals that you are serious about photography and will only buy the best camera, it’s a status symbol and a sign that declares who you are.
Placement: Shelf space, web shelf space, social visible space (like having your product in the hands of a celebrity), ad shelf space, proximity to brands you want to be next to.
Promotion: Products can be promoted into the conciousness of the masses without any traditional advertising, when using promotion you reach the audience you want to want your product directly.
Permission: It’s powerful to have people that want to be receptive to you, that want a membership with you
PR: putting the story into the world, which is a crucial marketing strategy
Placebo: Believing a product is better makes you experience it as better
Persistance: Frequency + consistency, not overwhelming people. You often have to see an ad multiple times to remember it but you dont want to remember it because its irritating
Place – A place creates an emotion, physical environment or even website, what feelings does it bring up in people?
More on Emotions:
Story: the story of the brand or product should speak clearly to people, a brand and a story must coexist. User needs to understand the value of the product more than just the price point.
Experience: “We don’t sell stuff, we sell the way people experience the stuff”
Worldview: the expectations we all bring into any given situation will affect how we receive a product
Personas: how would a theoretical archetype experience your website, based on their persona?
Customer service: customer service can bring a lot of personality to a company, especially if theres a “culture” between the workers
Risk (perception): people are afraid of being afraid, of new ideas and products, and of missing out on what everyone else is doing or using.
Multilevel marketing: it works because of the combination of person-to-person sales, and the need for the seller to really believe in the product for their own integrity
Network effect: opposite of the scarcity effect, which is used for items that are percieved as rare, the network effect is something that works better when more people use it (like facebook)
More on Change:
Awareness: the thought you can become a part of peoples awareness, having a precense in social media isnt enough if people aren’t aware of you being present
Authority: “I may know you exist but I don’t trust you”. Having authority on a product or market means people believe you when you say “this is effective” or “this is the best”
Closing the sale: people’s heart rate spikes when they are about to make a purchase, so marketing aims to bring them past that point of hesitation
Copywriting: not many people can write copy, and copy is underestimated. Words communicate stories
Free: people giving attention and trust in a company, in exchange a company gains awareness and an audience
Hype: when someone overpromises something and consumers end up disappointed
Lifetime value analyst: profit from your lifetime of purchases and their network of people and their lifetime of purchases. The goal is to spend as much as you need to get that first wave of people
Movement: is your maketing going to make a movement? What does it need to achieve that?
ROI (Return on Investment): when I buy X ad to reach people, how many people am I reaching? Is it balanced in the amount I spent on X ad versus the amount of people absorbed it?
RFP (Request for Proposal): a company alerts people of something and people express their need for it when they do need it. This doesn’t include much marketing, as its not about people wanting something
Trust: “The easiest way in the world to change someone is for them to trust you”. People that are skeptical aren’t going to buy products.
More on Alert:
Direct marketing varies from other kinds of marketing, because direct marketing is measured and direct to the consumers (like email), other kinds like billboards cannot be tested and measured in the same way
Cold calling: untrustworthy and ineffective
Subscriptions: powerful tool, as once you have people subscribed to you, you can do a lot, as long as you maintain their trust in what they subscribed to
Diminishing versus Increasing Returns: diminishing returns means you are doing more and getting less, and increasing returns is the result of more people doing something, now other people now want to do it
Mass market: “Everyone wants it because everyone has it”
Retail: offers little control to a marketer, takes a lot of time and money to get established in
Retention: How long does a customer maintain interest and loyalty? If you let people down, you will lose them for good, especially if you let them down by comprimising your product quality
Build a schedule: your almost never going to build a company or marketing campaign in a short time, it should be a journey of consistence and reliability
More on Share:
Referrals: In a post media world, person to person referrals/reviews help us make a choice or opinion.
Viral marketing: “marketing that markets itself”
Hive: the small group of people that can be marketed to as a “niche”
Amplifier: who is a persistent and outspoken fan and how do I promote them to promote me?
Persistence: are you temporary or permanent?
Citation:
Godin, Seth. “The Modern Marketing Workshop.” Skillshare. Skillshare, n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2017. <https://www.skillshare.com/classes/The-Modern-Marketing-Workshop/96411401>.