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WHITEPAPER: Marketing: Ain’t it a $*@!ch
The process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service. Marketing
is about a lot more than just placing an ad in the Sunday paper. There’s physical marketing,
such as post cards, brochures, even business cards. There’s digital marketing, such as search
engine optimization, search engine marketing, and social media. As the internet grows, having
a presence on the web is becoming as important as having presence in the physical world. It is
even more important to have a web presence if your product is a digital good, but no matter
what your product or service is, you can’t fully neglect one or the other.
While marketing firms typically focus on marketing towards a specific group of people, they
cast a wide net when it comes to how they market to them. You know those credit card letters
you get in the mail and throw away immediately? Some people don’t throw them away
immediately. Some people will open them and read them because they enjoy the feeling that
the credit card company is reaching out directly to them in a personal matter. It appeals to
some, doesn’t appeal to others. Physical ads and business cards are a much more personal
form of marketing than digital. It’s a tangible good, something they can see right in front of
them, touch, and take home with them, kind of like those little magnet calendars pizza places
give you. Every time you close the refrigerator, you are looking at their logo.
Digital marketing, in addition to advertisements, is more about providing instant information
and communicating directly with a customer. Besides giving big mouth celebrities a platform to
say their opinions, Twitter’s architecture allows businesses to send out immediate updates to
thousands of people interested in their product/service. Advertisements on Facebook and
Google search allow targeted ads towards people who show any interest towards what you’re
selling. LinkedIn is a massive database of skilled and not-so-skilled professionals that recruiters
can use to advertise their business as a new employment opportunity. Does your product look
awesome in photographs? You can use Pintrest/Instagram to share the beauty of it with the
rest of the world. Sans Google search, all of the sites mentioned above are social media. These
are sites used by millions of people everyday. If you can create interesting, thought provoking
content, people will notice and will share it, basically doing the rest of the work for you!
350 S Northwest Highway
Ste 300
Park Ridge, IL 60068
www.immortaldc.com
Tel: 800-439-3207
Local: 312-789-4631
Fax: 888-870-3705
WHITEPAPER: Marketing: Ain’t it a $*@!ch
Marketing can feel like trial and error. Chances are your first attempt at advertising will not get
you hundreds of new customers. Don’t get discouraged though. Remember about the mail you
get from credit card companies? You get those letters in the mail almost every week. Ninetynine times out of one hundred, it goes in the garbage. But if your circumstances change, and
you need a new credit card, you could be signing up with that credit card company because of
the letter they sent you, and they’ll recoup the cost of the first 99 failed letters they sent you.
Point is, keep sending out advertisements. Figure out what your customer’s want/need, appeal
to this in your advertisements and your product, and tell them that your product does what
they need. Avoid cliches like “Sex sells”, unless of course your product is related to sex. People
see right through these cliches. Keep a positive relationship with people who actually buy your
product too. Reach out to them. Ask them what they like about it, what they don’t like about
it, and what they would like from you in the future. A happy customer is more likely to share
your product with someone else than an unhappy customer – and an unhappy customer will be
all too willing to share how unhappy they are. Work with the unhappy customers as much as
the happy ones, because face it, if you were given 100 compliments and 1 negative on that new
t-shirt you wore, you’re going to remember that 1 negative comment. Humans are hard-wired
to remember the negative easier moreso than positive.
Marketing is as much a science as it is an art. Remember: if you don’t like receiving
advertisement a certain way, why would you send your potential clients the same thing you
despise? Take an example of these whitepapers: they’re not your traditional whitepaper, with
lots of facts, data, and other boring information. It’s written in a normal, speech style as if we’re
having a conversation with you. Why? Because we’re normal, too, and we hate the boring
whitepapers. When we receive a whitepaper, we just delete it. The style is just not what we
like. We appreciate the effort on the writier, though! (Although, admit it, we could probably use
an image or 2, though.)
Is marketing simple? Yes, that’s why it’s so difficult. You have to be patient, but the most critical
point you have to remember is: be honest with your clientele. Your product or business may be
350 S Northwest Highway
Ste 300
Park Ridge, IL 60068
www.immortaldc.com
Tel: 800-439-3207
Local: 312-789-4631
Fax: 888-870-3705
WHITEPAPER: Marketing: Ain’t it a $*@!ch
the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if you market it incorrectly, if you market it wrong, or
“glaze over the truth” too much, your brand may be blemished, at worst, or at best, forgotten.
Keep your campaigns consistent, interesting, and honest.
© Immortal Design, http://immortaldc.com. You are welcome to share, reproduce this content,
just give us credit for it! (And send us a note, we’d love to see where our work is!)
350 S Northwest Highway
Ste 300
Park Ridge, IL 60068
www.immortaldc.com
Tel: 800-439-3207
Local: 312-789-4631
Fax: 888-870-3705