Marketing: An Art or a Science?

When a tree falls and no one hears, does it make a noise?

Marketing is both an art and a science.  To demonstrate, let’s start with the arts and sciences of a marketing campaign to promote your product or service.  
 
Let’s say you had the best creative for your marketing campaign, beguiling visuals, captivating headlines, and refreshing originality, but you didn’t have sales.  Then it’s time to boost your marketing sciences knowhow.  Likewise, if you were pulling all the right levers, hitting your specific target markets through the right channels, regularly enough to be heard, but you didn’t have enough sales, then the creative just isn’t compelling.  Either way, your campaign might just be like the tree that falls when nobody is listening - noiseless. 
 
Here are some helpful hints for improving the arts and sciences of your next marketing campaign. 
3 ways to improve the art of a marketing campaign, or the creative: 

1. Captivate the senses.  In online marketing that means captivating first the eye and maybe the ear.  You have to make enough people stop swiping through social media or emails long enough to notice you.  Just like the word, “Free,” can stop people in their tracks, so can a powerful image.  A laughing child or huge, powerful wave can evoke powerful emotions.  And images have the power to turn on memories of other senses, such as a puppy’s softness, the prickliness of a rose’s stem or the flavor of something cooked in butter.  Don’t crank up the volume to make your point.  People get immune to that, but they are not immune to the sound of extraordinary musical notes or a show-stopping voice.  And if you own a food and beverage location, you have the power of smell when people walk by.  
2. Keep it simple.  Make just one simple point per touch, and offer a way to learn more.  Too many words, too many images, too many messages are too much!  The swiping gets faster.  People tune out.  Good creative captures attention.  Winning creative creates prospects.  Follow-up via other marketing opportunities like websites, special offers and sales calls to close the sales.
3. Research!  Big companies spend millions of dollars on advertising research.  They study which markets like which creative concept.  If you don’t have millions to do it yourself, study what they are doing.  Is everyone advertising to your audience using the color blue?  Their research probably says that the audience trusts the company more if the advertising is blue.  Do they all focus on pain points? Or humor?  Millions were spent to learn that pain points or humor work for that industry and market.  Your advertising shouldn’t look like theirs, because that will leave your audience confused.  But, you may want to take into consideration what they have already learned.  For example, the color dark brown features regularly in coffee ads.  Not too surprising for this coffee lover!  

Three ways to improve the science of a marketing campaign: 

1. Refine your target market.  Amazon began as a book store and Facebook began as a college service.  The more targeted you are in the beginning, the more likely it is that your target market will hear and see you.  You can always expand markets later!  The more targeted the audience, the more you can understand them.  What social media platforms do they use?  What are their pain points?  What are their ideals?  There’s plenty of data out there, and you can always connect with them and ask them about what they buy and their preferences.  
2. Make realistic projections by channel. There is a great deal of data available about how many prospects you’ll need based on average rates of converting prospects to customers.  For example, a prospect on social media has a much lower likelihood to convert to a customer than a prospect who has been referred by one of your customers.  Plan your campaigns accordingly, and make sure the cost of the campaign has a good ROI.  Do the research carefully!

3.Make sure any offers you make are profitable.  Pricing is a science and promotion is both an art and a science.  In the end, the business has to be profitable, so plan on the retail markup and the promotional price cut.   
 
The Profitable Idea Workshop has been a successful program for small business owners for a decade and is now going to be available online and self-paced.  Join our email list to learn more and to get special offers when we launch!

All the best!

Amanda