Marketing: understanding everything you need to be an excellent marketing manager

The simplest definition of marketing

Marketing is getting my message across to my target audience.

Does that seem simplistic to you? However, this definition has the advantage of perfectly summarizing the key elements of good marketing:

• “My target” : the most fundamental aspect of marketing is that you can't talk to everyone. No you can't. Having a clear and PRECISE target is a pillar of marketing.
• “My message” : Having a target is good but having something to say to them is better. This “message” can also be called positioning and it is absolutely essential for success.
• “Pass on” : Yes, marketing also means choosing the levers and strategies that will allow your message to meet your target audience. The best positioning in the world is useless if its target, however perfect it may be, does not hear about it.

The pitfalls of today's marketing

Marketing is a field that is evolving at a frightening pace. Everything changes every day. This leads to a lot of problems for marketing managers.

Trap 1: Confusing novelty with fundamentals.

Countless marketing professionals think that this profusion of new strategies, new tools, and new platforms exempt them from going back to basics.

No, the new trendy tool will not exempt you from having a clear positioning and target.

Trap 2: Standardization

This is the consequence of the profusion of tools, without understanding what we are doing, organizations copy each other. “If others do it why not me?” , it's dangerous because good marketing differentiates.

This problem is getting worse with generative AI. Supertool, based on an understanding of what is being done in general.

Pitfall 3: Misunderstanding the concept of ROI

Today, marketing managers tend to constantly run for a clear, immediate and certain ROI. So they spend most of their time chasing after a ghost.

The ROI of a good positioning may be difficult to measure but it is by far the most important one you will have.

The different types of marketing?

Now let's review some of the marketing types that are most used today.

Strategic marketing

Strategic marketing focuses on in-depth analysis and market understanding in order to design effective strategies to achieve business goals. It is characterized by a long-term vision and an approach based on global market trends.

It is also strategic marketing that must determine what is the preferred target for the company and its offers and with which positioning to evolve.

Operational marketing

It is the part of marketing that aims to get your message across to the target that is determined by strategic marketing. This is where we find dozens of different types of marketing:

Digital marketing

The most obvious is important today. The digital marketing includes all the marketing actions that can be deployed on digital media. It is the most important type of marketing to master in order to develop your business today.

Product marketing

Product marketing is generally focused on the life cycle of a specific product in order to maximize sales and profitability. So we are focused on a product rather than on the company as a whole.

We can also talk about marketing included in the product, this is particularly the case for example with SaaS software on demand or video games that include marketing techniques within the product itself.

Relationship marketing

Relationship marketing is focused on creating and maintaining long-term relationships with customers. The objective is to build customer loyalty by offering added value, often beyond the product or service itself. This can include loyalty programs, exceptional customer service, and personalized communications.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing involves partnering with influencers to promote a product, brand, or service. The objective is to exploit the reach and credibility of the influencer to reach a target audience.

Campaigns can be run on a variety of platforms, such as social media, and may include sponsored posts, videos, or other content.

Street marketing

Street marketing is a promotional technique that uses public spaces to reach consumers directly. It aims to create a close and often unexpected interaction, in order to generate engagement or buzz around a product, service or brand. Activities may include flyer distribution, live performances, or interactive installations.

Sensory marketing

Sensory marketing aims to use the five senses to create an emotional and memorable shopping experience. It can include things like background music, specific scents, or store lighting.

The aim is to positively influence consumer perception and promote brand loyalty.

Direct marketing

Direct marketing is a communication method that aims to reach specific consumers in an individual and measurable way.

It uses various channels such as postal mail, email, SMS, or telephone to send personalized messages. The aim is often to generate an immediate response, such as a sale or a registration.

His number 1 enemy: The ad stop!

Strategic marketing levers for success

To help you understand marketing, here are some tools that we consider absolutely necessary for good strategic marketing at Sales Odyssey. The list is not exhaustive!

Brand positioning and minimum viable

The posturing is one of the bases of marketing strategy. It makes it possible to differentiate your brand on the market and is the basis of your communication. La Minimum Viable Brand (MVB) is a complementary concept that defines the essential elements of your identity.

These key concepts deserve special attention in your strategy. To learn more about these crucial topics, we invite you to consult our articles dedicated to marketing positioning and branding.

Useful strategic marketing techniques to keep in mind

The BCG matrix

The BCG matrix is a strategic management tool that makes it possible to analyze a company's business portfolio. It categorizes products or services based on two dimensions: market growth and relative market share.

• The “Cash Cows” : They are the products or services with a high market share in a slowly growing market. They generate stable profits but have limited growth potential.
• The “Stars” : They are products or business units with a high market share in a rapidly growing market. They have high growth potential and can become future cash cows.
• The “Dilemmas” : They are products or business units with a low market share in a rapidly growing market. They require investments to gain market share or should be considered for possible suppression.
• The “Dead Weights” : They are products or business units with a low market share in a slow-growing market. They generally do not generate significant benefits and may be candidates for elimination.

The marketing mix: The 4Ps of marketing

The marketing mix, also known as the “4Ps”, is a simple marketing framework. It includes the key elements of marketing to effectively market your products or services:

• Product (or Service) : What is available on the market, including its features, quality, and design.
• prix : The pricing of the product or service, determining its value for customers.
• Promotion : Communication and advertising activities aimed at informing and convincing customers.
• Distribution (Place) : The distribution and sales channels to make the product available to customers.

There are a multitude of variants with the 5P, 7P and even 10P. For more information, I recommend our article on The marketing mix.

The Swot

SWOT analysis is a strategic marketing framework used to assess the position of a company or project in its market. It consists of four key components:

• Strengths : These are the internal assets of the company, such as its skills, resources, and competitive advantages.
• Weaknesses : These are the internal aspects where the company has gaps or deficiencies, such as limited resources or ineffective processes.
• Opportunities : These are external factors favorable to the business, such as market trends, new growth opportunities, or positive regulatory changes.
• Threats : These are external factors that can endanger the business, such as increased competition, unfavorable market developments, or economic risks.

Methods for tracking goals

Tracking goals is a crucial aspect of strategic marketing. Without indicators, not much usually happens and at Sales Odyssey we have two preferred methods: SMART goals And the method OKR.

Les SMART goals, acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Defined, are a structured approach to setting clear and achievable goals. They are used to create a pragmatic annual marketing and sales plan and to monitor the performance of our teams.

La OKR method (Objectives and Key Results) is a management system for defining objectives and implementing them at all levels of the company, by combining key results. OKRs are ambitious, concrete and action-oriented. They are designed to encourage innovation.

Operational marketing levers for success?

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on creating quality content and providing value to potential customers. Its objective is to naturally attract prospects to a business rather than solicit them in an intrusive way.

It relies on the use of blogs, social media, videos, and other content to build lasting relationships with customers, converting them into leads, and then into loyal customers. This approach aims to create mutual trust and generate sales more organically.

Our article onInbound marketing can help you.

Outbound marketing

Outbound marketing is a more traditional marketing approach initiated by the company to reach customers. It involves tactics such as paid advertising, cold calling or even email marketing.

The main objective of outbound marketing is to actively spread the company's message to a wide audience, often without them having expressed prior interest.

For more information, you can read our article onOutbound marketing.

Social media marketing

The Social media marketing It's social media marketing such as Facebook, Instagram, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn to reach and engage the target audience. It involves creating and sharing relevant content, interacting with subscribers, promoting products or services, and building brand awareness on these platforms.

Social networks also have their own advertising system, in this case we speak of social ads. The objective is always the same, to increase the company's turnover.

Search engine marketing

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) concerns online marketing focused on improving the visibility of a website in search engine results, both through paid advertising called PPC (Pay-Per-Click) andsearch engine optimization (SEO).

Growth hacking

A vast and very fashionable subject! The Growth Hacking is a type of “guerrilla” marketing the idea is to obtain quick, easily measurable results and to iterate to optimize the marketing tactics put in place.

This is a recent trend mainly linked to the democratization of automation and web design tools that allow these rapid iterations. Be careful not to always focus on the short term, this can play tricks.

Flywheel marketing, AARRR and the marketing funnel

It is a technique for modeling the journey of a potential customer from the moment they discover your brand to their transformation into a customer or ambassador.

Flywheel marketing is a cyclical representation of this journey, the AARRR framework is a modeling centered on the company and its business model, the marketing funnel is a linear representation centered on the maturity of the potential customer.

To find out more we have written dedicated guides:

• The guide to Funnel marketing
• The AARRR framework
• The Flywheel Marketing

Marketing is a very broad field and the different strategies must be able to coexist effectively. To do this, the best marketing managers must be able to understand all the levers.

There is no need to be an expert on each of them but they must be able to understand all of them well in order to exchange and manage experts.

The best marketing managers know how to surround themselves

Finding the right experts and delegating the operational implementation of your plan to them is essential. It is because it is impossible to be an expert in everything that you need to surround yourself and you will not be able to manage these experts effectively if you do not have an overview of the whole picture.

Your bottom line depends on your ability to find the best experts in each area of operational marketing.

A good marketing director (or director) knows how to size the effort

The most difficult thing is surely to understand that the effort must be in proportion to the objective. There are a multitude of levers and strategies to be implemented but they come at a cost.

In exercising the marketing function you need to understand that saying yes to one will close the door for others. Scale your efforts as accurately as possible so as not to run out of resources when the time comes.

The best marketing managers know how to go beyond the obvious

Doing the same as everyone else is reassuring. Bet on an ROI after 3 months as well. But great successes are often built where others are not and over longer time horizons. Be smart, not conformist.

Now that you have understood the fundamentals of marketing, we invite you to delve deeper into the concept of branding, which is the next step in developing a solid marketing strategy.

Branding will allow you to build a strong and memorable brand identity, which is essential to stand out in a competitive market.