Is your marketing entertaining your audience?
Marketing in it’s simplest form is communicating a message to your target audience through a variety of channels, both off-line (traditional print) and on-line to prompt a response. Most businesses need to market themselves in one form or another, be it a full on campaign covering a range of channels down to just handing out your company promotional items.
- If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday”, that’s advertising.
- If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion.
- If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed, that’s publicity.
- And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations.
- If the town’s citizens go the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales.
- And, if you planned the whole thing, that’s Marketing!
The aim of marketing is to know and understand your customer so well that your product or service fits them and sells itself. This can be achieved through a number of communication channels: print campaigns, advertising, sales brochures, posters, PR, radio, TV and the ever expanding variety of online communication – websites, SEO, blogs and social media.
If you are starting off in business or have a developing business you need to take your marketing communication seriously and ensure you engage your target audience and meet (and ideally exceed) their needs. Effective marketing can increase your business activity, improve customer sharing of your products (word of mouth – particularly on social networks) and also build fans of your brand in turn developing your business and increasing sales.
A good marketing strategy will conduct research to understand your competition, and more importantly your customers, identify your unique selling point and refine your products/services to target your market. It should also set goals and benchmarks with measurable analytic systems. Most marketing does take time for a return on your investment but if you can get your customers to buy the ticket then they can take (and enjoy) the ride.
One Bright Spark, your local and friendly Exeter based agency, can help you entertain your audience by working with you to develop your marketing strategy and development. We offer a ‘marketing department in a box’ solution meaning you don’t need to employ an expensive team of experts but can have specialist experience available to you at a fraction of the cost.
With over 20 years of experience throughout Devon and beyond producing communications in a variety of channels why not use our knowledge and wealth of marketing expertise to ensure you use the right ‘form’ of marketing for your business? We can offer a wide range of services including off-line solutions such as print design, advertising, branding & corporate identity, brochures & branded stationery through to web design & development, social media, email marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO).
