The ultimate guide to understanding different types of marketing

For any business, it’s important to stand out from its competitor to become customers’ first choice. Whether your business is online or offline, you need to find the right marketing strategies to grow your business. The right types of marketing strategy can help you to build awareness, reach a large audience, and boost your revenue. 

Different types of marketing strategies can help you reach your prospective customers and make them aware of your brand. You can let people know how your products or services can be helpful and make their lives easier. The forms of marketing are not only meant to make customers aware but facilitate them throughout their buying journey. 

Marketing can aid you in showing your prospective customers how you are better than others in the market. With marketing, you can make customers believe that your offerings are the best. It can help you to make your sales process effortless. Without marketing, most of businesses would fail to drive sales and generate revenue.

Today, there are many different types of marketing that you can use to promote your business. But these distinct types of marketing strategies often confuse marketers & business owners to implement the right one for their business. Here, in this blog, we will provide you with information about the different types of marketing & marketing options that you can utilize. 

History of marketing 

Many people think that marketing started when commerce began, as people wanted to sell their products. But according to etymologists, the term ‘marketing’ first appeared in the 16th century when it referred to the process of buying and selling at a market. 

Later, the marketing term was used in the printing press and the first magazines. Print advertising like billboards and newspapers made marketing more popular. Marketing has evolved with time along with technology. For example, television sets came into existence, and commercials too. 

Marketing has constantly evolved with technology, providing new ways to marketers for promoting their businesses. In the present time, different types of marketing exist like email marketing, search engines, and social media marketing. 

B2B and B2C marketing

For determining the right marketing strategies for your business, you must first consider your target audience. There are two main types of businesses: B2B and B2C. 

Business to Business (B2B) marketing involves businesses marketing their products or services to other businesses. They often use a sales team to reach out to other businesses and inform them about their offerings. Many B2B companies focus on their client relationships to make people return to them and provide referrals. 

Business-to-Customers (B2C) marketing requires businesses to market their products or services to customers directly. For example, Big Bazaar markets directly to its customers to purchase their groceries and household items from them. They use different types of marketing and advertising to promote their service. B2C businesses need to implement marketing strategies that focus on people’s emotions. 

Based on the nature of your business, you need to create different types of marketing strategy. It’s always good to start by identifying and understanding your target audience. You can also use WebMaxy Analyzer to understand your customers’ behavioral patterns and trends. 

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What is marketing? 

According to American Marketing Association, “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

Marketing is a form of advertising but not exactly advertising. The purpose of marketing is to create awareness, provide information, and boost the sales of a brand. For example, a press release is marketing and a pamphlet is advertising.

Marketing lies at crossroads between the business and customers, it talks about the buyer’s requirements and the company’s offerings. Marketing can be elucidated as the process of learning about your customers’ needs & wants and developing & maintaining a relationship with them. 

There are many different types of marketing categorized into offline and digital marketing. Depending on your business and target audience you should choose the marketing types that fit your business. Both the marketing and sales team must work together. 

Marketing is not just about communicating about your brand and closing more deals. It goes beyond that and focuses on creating a psychological impact on people’s minds. For example, when we want toothpaste in the morning, Colgate comes to our mind first. When we think about noodles, we recall Maggie. 

For robust marketing, it’s vital to know who your customers are, what they want, and how your brand can meet their needs. People are no longer constricted to limited choices. There are many companies providing products or services in every niche.  

Marketing makes an enormous impact on how people think about your product or service. It can be beneficial or harmful for your brand depending on how you conduct it. For example, positive client testimonials and discussions can help build a great brand image. Whereas, an ad showing a guy putting on perfume and gorgeous girls getting into his arm can affect a brand image. 

Nowadays, most of the companies know that sexist promotional advertising, putting ads on billboards, and numerous salespeople won’t get them anywhere. To build a powerful brand, it’s crucial to conduct the types of marketing effectively. A brand should not only focus on advertising itself but educating its target audience. 

For example, the sanitary pad ads where a brand show a doctor talking about the benefits of using a sanitary pad. Such type of marketing not only promotes the brand’s product but also educates the audience about its benefits. 

What is marketing in business? 

Setting up a business and creating great products is just step one. Marketing helps to make people aware of the brand and entices them to make a purchase. Many times people consider marketing and advertising as the same but they are not. 

Marketing involves determining the selling points of the product and crafting the brand image through the product or service. It’s about providing information about your brand and making people understand why they should choose you over other competitors in the market. 

Marketing is about making people understand, how your product or service can help meet their needs. It includes product demonstration videos and images that display how your product will seem in real life. Everything that lets your potential customers know about your brand and what sets you apart is a part of marketing.

Different types of marketing aim not only to promote the products or services but form & maintain relationships with customers. Marketing also aids in enhancing the customer retention rate which can help you sustain your brand in the long term. 

If you have an eCommerce business, then starting with digital media is a great idea. As per the statistics, 91% of people who follow a brand on social media go to their website or app. 89% of them also purchase from that same brand. 

Through different types of marketing, you can keep in touch with your audience even after they make a purchase. For example, sending follow-up emails or emails with special offers and discounts. Marketing plays a crucial role from attracting customers to retaining them for a long time. 

What are the different types of Marketing? 

Now, you know how marketing can benefit a business in various ways. Marketing can be divided into two main marketing categories that we have discussed below:

• Offline marketing: Offline marketing can be called traditional marketing. It includes print, radio, and television advertising. Attending trade exhibits & conferences and Word-of-mouth marketing is also a type of offline marketing.
• Online marketing: Online marketing can also be called digital marketing. These days as most of the people are available online which has made marketing online more favorable. It includes Search Engine Optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing, etc.

Many brands use a combination of both offline and online marketing to target their customers. This is an effective way to ensure that you reach the maximum of your potential customers. 

Next, we will discuss the different types of marketing that come under the offline and online marketing categories. 

1. Content marketing 

Content marketing refers to the process of distributing content to make customers aware and educate them about your brand, products, or services. It can help to create brand awareness and build customer relationships. The different types of content marketing include blogs, infographics, social media posts, and videos. 

Great content can help you grasp people’s attention in just a few seconds. By providing informative content to your prospects you can turn them into your customers easily. You can post enlightening blogs with high-quality images and videos that drive traffic to your website. 

Content marketing helps people to make informed decisions. Always remember to include a call to action (CTA) in your content so that you can direct readers to become your customers. 

2. Social media marketing 

Social media marketing includes using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. It aims to expand your reach and engage with current customers actively. Social media marketing is a cost-effective tool with the potential of driving a high number of customers.  

Social media can help you humanize your brand and connect with customers in a personalized way. Make sure to keep your communication in a friendly and right tone as it affects how people see your brand. Be careful while communicating with customers on social media platforms as harsh words can damage your brand image. 

Social media marketing helps you to get direct customer feedback. You can respond to your customers’ comments and queries directly. However, sometimes it gets tricky to respond to a large number of customers approaching you on social media. Therefore, it’s important that you have sufficient customer service representatives. 

3. Email marketing 

Most of the companies, let it be B2B or B2C use email marketing to reach their prospective customers. As per the statistics, email marketing gives a high ROI of $40 for every dollar spent. Email marketing can be described as the process of sending emails to potential or existing customers. 

You can implement different email marketing strategies to build brand awareness, bring customers, and retain existing ones. Email marketing enables businesses to engage with customers and deliver them information related to their brand easily. 

You can craft emails with interactive content, videos, surveys, and form to keep customers involved. Try to keep your content interesting with a conversational tone. This can increase the chances of pushing prospects ahead in the funnel. 

Emails are an important part of B2B with being a prime mode of communication for 73% of organizations. You can send special discounts, new releases, and other information to your prospects. To encourage your customers to take action, you can share different offers. 

4. Search engine marketing 

Search Engine Marketing is a type of marketing that includes search engines like Google. It aims to ensure that your business website is visible on search engine results pages (SERPs). By doing search engine marketing you can make sure your website appears on top when a user searches a specific keyword. 

There are two types of search engine marketing that we have explained below:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is a marketing strategy that focuses on optimizing the website content to help increase the ranking of a website on search engines.
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising: PPC is another marketing strategy to make your website rank on search engines. However, your website will come in the paid search section instead of the organic results. In PPC advertising you need to pay-per-click while SEO focuses on bringing organic traffic to your website. Both SEO and PPC can help you bring traffic to your website and generate revenue.

In PPC advertising you need to pay-per-click while SEO focuses on bringing organic traffic to your website. Both SEO and PPC can help you bring traffic to your website and generate revenue. 

In the last few years, SEM is being mainly associated with PPC while SEO has become a separate strategy. SEM is a strategy that can give any business results as it can help to improve reach and get more conversions.

5. Influencer marketing 

Influencer marketing is a subset of social media marketing but many people consider it a different marketing strategy altogether. It is a type of marketing that can help you to increase your social media reach and engagement.

To start off with influencer marketing, you must choose the influencers that have your target audience as their followers. Then, create a strategy and budget that aligns with your marketing plan. However, before finalizing the influencers consider their niche, size of audience, and engagement metrics. 

The best way to find influencers and contact them is through social media and influencer marketing platforms. If you still can’t find influencers then you can hire an external agency that can research and outreach for you. 

6. Partner marketing/ Co-marketing 

Partner marketing is among the popular types of marketing. It is basically a marketing partnership or collaboration between two brands. In co-marketing, both partners promote each other to get mutual benefits. This way they can tap into each other audiences that they haven’t reached before. 

For partner marketing, it’s important that brands align on their goals, and have products or services that complement each other. They should also have similar customer profiles and buyer personas. 

7. Affiliate marketing 

Affiliate marketing is one the best types of marketing that can help you attract and retain customers. It is a strategy in which you pay an external website or agency for the sales that are generated through their website referrals. 

This type of marketing is often used in combination with an influencer marketing strategy. You can choose a brand or website that closely aligns with your target audience and promote your products or services to them. 

Affiliate marketing is a cost-effective method to spread awareness and generate revenue. The best thing about it is that you only pay them a commission for the results or sales that you get through your affiliate partner.

8. Account-Based marketing

Account Based Marketing is a focused marketing strategy in which an individual prospect or customer is targeted with dedicated marketing efforts. The marketing teams create personalized content, host events, and connect with the accounts that have more probability of closing deals. 

To start with ABM, you first need to identify the key accounts that have more chances of securing a deal. Next, you need to create messaging with the issues that matter the most to them. This way you can ensure that you focus your marketing resources on where you have the highest chances of getting returns. 

9. Brand marketing 

Brand marketing is one of the types of marketing that focuses on the long-term establishment of a brand. The aim is to make the brand recognizable and shape the public perception of the brand. 

This type of branding is done by creating a connection with the target audience through creativity, inspiration, and humor. The goal is to provoke strong emotions and positive sentiments among people about the brand. 

For brand marketing, it’s important you understand what your target customers want and what affects them. You should consider how you can stand out from your competitors and position yourself in the market. 

10. Buzz marketing 

Buzz marketing is among the latest types of marketing that can boost your brand reach and sales. It is a marketing strategy that aims to create interesting content and use influencers to generate anticipation & buzz in the market about the launch of a product or service. 

Buzz marketing is great to make your product or service viral if done correctly. You need to reach out to the influencers in the early stage and plan your social media marketing properly. 

11. Word-of-Mouth Marketing 

Word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful way to get new customers. Imagine your friend or family telling you about something, you’ll trust them without any doubt. This is one of the best marketing strategies to get new customers through your existing customers. 

However, you can’t force this marketing strategy but certainly, there are ways through which you can encourage it. Try to create viral and shareable content that people can share with their friends. You can run loyalty and referral programs to motivate people to promote your product or service. 

The Bottom Line 

You can implement different marketing strategies to increase your brand awareness and amplify sales. However, it’s important that you put efforts in the right direction instead of making efforts everywhere. In the above blog, we have given information about the different types of marketing. 

When deciding on a marketing strategy, you should consider your business type and target customers. You should try to implement different types of marketing that can help you to reach out to the maximum number of customers in a less time period. It’s not necessary that what works for other businesses might work for you as well. 

Craft a marketing strategy that perfectly aligns with the objectives and goals of your business. WebMaxy eGrowth is an all-in-one eCommerce management platform that can help you manage your marketing effectively. It comes with a wide range of features like a KPI dashboard, marketing insights, audience segmentation, marketing automation, email marketing, social media marketing, WhatsApp marketing, retargeting ads, and a help desk. 

The conversion dashboard feature enables you to know how your different marketing campaigns are performing. You can know how many conversions and revenue you are getting from a specific marketing campaign.

In the social media marketing feature, you can manage all your social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn in one place. You can plan and schedule your different social media posts altogether. You can also analyze the performance of your different posts like their impressions, clicks, and shares. 

To learn more about WebMaxy eGrowth, connect with our experts on call or email us at [email protected]. 

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