PICTURE THIS: your marketing team sits around a boardroom table.
Production on the new product is complete.
You're prepared to take it to the marketplace.
Everyone is excited to share your cool new item with the world.
Then the VP of Marketing asks the BIG question:
"So, what type of marketing should we use?"
Silence falls over the crowd.
And then you realize something: it's a trick question.
See, if you can only come up with one answer to that question, you don't understand marketing.
Marketing hinges on the concept of "It all depends..."
For that reason, it's important to understand ALL forms of marketing.
For that reason, it's essential to apply as many of them as possible to get the word out about your product.
Here's a crash course on just about every type of marketing available. Pick the ones that best work for you and your company:
1. Affiliate Marketing. Promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts.
2. Article Marketing. A business writes short articles related to its respective industry. It makes these articles freely available. Each article contains a by-line, which becomes a filter for leads and a driver of web traffic.
3. Buzz Marketing. Viral marketing technique that attempts to make each encounter with a consumer appear to be a unique, spontaneous personal exchange of information instead of a calculated marketing pitch choreographed by a professional advertiser.
4. Catalog Marketing. Presentation of a set of items available for purchase, including description, price, and ordering information sent out to a targeted list of customers.
5. Cause Marketing. Any type of marketing effort for social and other charitable causes, including in-house marketing efforts by non-profit organizations.
6. Cell Phone Marketing. Also known as Mobile Marketing, this new phenomenon uses text messaging, pictures and videos on individual cell phone to broadcast marketing messages.
7. Chotchke Marketing. Giving away a free trinket, knick-knack or decorative souvenir to generate brand awareness and visibility.
8. Citizen Marketing. User-generated media, social networking-based, usually online viral marketing, which allows the people to be the message.
9. Community Marketing. Engaging an audience in an active, non-intrusive prospect and customer conversation. Either organic or sponsored, this type of marketing connects customers to customers; customers to companies and customers with prospects.
10. Conference Marketing. Creating a presence at a conference with via various mediums and techniques to reach a large yet targeted audience.
11. Content Marketing. Includes Article Marketing and/or any other form of free content distribution for the purpose of generating leads and driving web traffic.
12. Customer Focused Marketing. Constantly gathering information about your customers in an effort to better serve them. Improves the relationship between the marketer and its current and potential customers. Also uses existing customers to help locate new customers.
13. Database Marketing. A form of direct marketing using databases of customers or potential customers to generate personalized communications in order to promote a product or service for marketing purposes.
14. Digital Marketing. Promoting products and services using database-driven online distribution channels to reach consumers in a timely, relevant, personal and cost-effective manner.
15. Direct Marketing. Driving purchases that can be attributed to a specific "call-to-action". Direct marketing is distinguished from other marketing efforts by its emphasis on trackable, measurable results.
16. Drip Marketing. A deliberate, planned and sequenced system of deploying marketing messages over a period of time.
17. Duct Tape Marketing. The more layers you apply, the more your marketing sticks!
18. Ecological Marketing. Also known as Green Marketing or Environmental Marketing, this is the promotion of environmentally safe or beneficial products.
19. Email Marketing. A form of direct marketing that uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience.
20. Engagement Marketing. Also known as Experience Marketing, the provider and consumer are co-creators in product development and marketing processes.
21. Evangelism Marketing. An advanced form of word of mouth marketing in which companies develop customers who believe so strongly in a particular product or service that they freely try to convince others to buy and use it. The customers become voluntary advocates, actively spreading the word on behalf of the company.
22. Event Marketing. Promotional activities involving an event such as a sporting or social event, designed to bring a product to the attention of the public.
23. Fax Marketing. Using a fax machine, computer, or any other device to send an unsolicited advertisement or marketing message to another fax machine.
24. Forum Marketing. Bulletin and/or message board-based arenas use to facilitate discussion, build community and drive web traffic around a specific topic or market.
25. Free Stuff Marketing. Giving away free products, services or information (i.e., things of value) in order to funnel in customers who will hopefully purchase something at a later time.
26. Global Marketing. Also known as International Marketing, a company applies its assets, experience and products to develop and maintain marketing strategies on a global scale.
27. Grassroots Marketing. Delivering key organizational messages to key audiences where they live, work and play.
28. Guerilla Marketing. An unconventional way of performing creative promotional activities on a very low budget.
29. Mobile Marketing. Marketing via a mobile device, i.e., a huge hot dog, in order to bring together companies and customers.
30. Network Marketing. Also known as Multi-Level Marketing, a person recruits salespeople to sell a product and offer additional sales commissions based on the sales of people recruited into their own downline.
31. Newsletter Marketing. A combination of permission marketing and direct email marketing, this content/value driven technology allows marketers to regularly publish information to their target audience.
32. Peer-to-Peer Marketing. Changing the source of the message by involving your clients in the process of converting leads to clients.
33. Permission Marketing. Marketers will ask permission before they send advertisements to prospective customers. It requires that people first "opt-in", rather than allowing people to "opt-out" only after the advertisements have been sent.
34. Personal Marketing. People and their careers are marketed as brands. Also known as Personal Branding, this suggests that success comes from self-packaging.
35. Piggyback Marketing. Arrangement in which one firm distributes a second firm's product or service.
36. Reality Marketing. A form of Permission marketing that blends many types of interactive advertising techniques into a Reality television show format.
37. Referral Marketing. A form of Affiliate exchanging. Referrals are normally redeemed for cash, goods or services.
38. Relationships Marketing. Emphasizing on building longer term relationships with customers rather than on individual transactions.
39. Reverse Marketing. Encouraging potential customers seek you out instead of the other way around. Accomplished by delivering value first.
40. Search Engine Marketing. Online marketing methods to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages.
41. Social Marketing. The systematic application of marketing alongside other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good.
42. Target Marketing. Market segment to which a particular product is marketed, defined by age, gender, geography, and/or socio-economic grouping often define it.
43. Testimonial Marketing. Using third party endorsements to build credibility for a product or service.
44. Trade Show Marketing. A combination of various marketing forms used at a trade show to create visibility in and target a specific industry.
45. Viral Marketing. Using pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes.
46. Word of Mouth Marketing. Activities that companies undertake to generate personal recommendations as well as referrals for brand names, products and services.
So, what type of marketing should YOU use?
THE ANSWER: all of the above.
LET ME ASK YA THIS...
What type of marketing was NOT on this list?
LET ME SUGGEST THIS...
Email me with your contribution and I'll add it to my list!
© 2007 All Rights Reserved.
Scott Ginsberg, aka "The Nametag Guy," is the internationally recognized author of four books, including "The Power of Approachability" and "How to be That Guy." He delivers speeches and publishes online learning tools that help businesspeople make a name for themselves - one conversation at a time. He can be reached at 314/256-1800 or you can email Scott directlyscott@hellomynameisscott.com.
