Image via WikipediaIn older days, if you ask the people what is marketing? and they will tell you about how about advertisement, branding, voucher, attracting visitor using mass media, and in conclusion: "Let people know about your offer and how good is your product and services" and the keyword here is "how good is your product". That means, telling people "as compare to my competitor, we have these advantages and lower price", "our product has this, this and this features which others don't", "we are giving away 50% discount during this New Year, come and grab it". This will be the typical marketing words.
Now, the consumer or buyer are more aware of these, the effectiveness of this marketing style has been decrease for the following reasons.
- Consumer is more intelligent and choosy now.
- Too many product or services is using the same techniques, so yours don't stand out from the crowd.
If the marketing campaign is good, then your sales effort will be decrease in order to achieve sales target. Marketing is the amplifier to sales effort.
- If your marketing effectiveness score 5, and your sales effort is 10, then your sales revenue will be 5x10 = 50.
- Thus, by increasing your marketing effectiveness to 10, and maintain the sales effort on 10, your sales revenue will increase to 10x10=100.
So, let's introduce two new marketing concepts: Permission Marketing & Educational Marketing.
Permission Marketing
Definition: Buyer is giving you the permission to market to them. (Previously it was push marketing where you push your TV ads to them, you push your insurance policy to them, you push the radio ads to them.)
Application: Google AdWords. Google Adwords is using permission marketing to the core. Let's say you are looking for a new house in Malaysia, and you typed in house in Malaysia. Not only you get the natural search result from Google, but you also get relevant ads from them. When you found the ads is interesting and applicable to you, and thus clicked the ads. This means that you are giving permission to the advertiser to market to you. They didn't find you, you found them, and you are ready to accept their offers.
Educational Marketing
Definition: Giving your potential valuable information by educating them about your business. (Previously it was hard selling, you hard sell your advantages and features, you hard sell with your low price.. ect)
Application: Instead of telling them your benefits, you teach them how to choose a good product, how to use your product to achieve something or how your services works in term of details. For example, some food advertiser are teaching how to live a healthy life, by balancing your work, exercise and healthy food, and of course they are using their own product in this. Educational marketing is very powerful because consumer are more interested in viewing it because it gave them valuable information, and they tends to like your product more and believe that it can help them.
More example:
- If you are selling English learning course, give them some free tools or tips that teach them how to write a good letter.
- If you are selling cars, give them tips on how to save fuel or maintain their car performance for free.
- If you are selling camera, teach them how to snap a great photo, design a free mini course for them.
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