FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

A marketing strategy is a long-term direction that an organisation’s marketing will take. It provides focus and a consistent approach to all marketing undertaken. It also provides a coordination between all marketing areas in order to achieve business goals. Setting a marketing strategy involves making major decisions that define the organisation’s core competencies and the basis for creating sustainable competitive advantage.

This is the approach to pricing that a business will take. The pricing strategy takes into consideration the financial objectives of the company, the product lifecycle, the cost price of the product, the market share, and competition and customer expectations before selecting an approach.

A mission statement clarifies an organisation’s purpose. It should be unambiguous and to the point. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organisation, spell out its overall goal, aid decision-making and provide the framework or context within which the company’s strategies are formulated

The SWOT analysis is a powerful tool for understanding your Strengths and Weaknesses, and identifying the Opportunities and Threats you face.

Effective use of a PEST analysis will allow you to avoid the risks and maximise the opportunities offered by the Political, Economic, Cultural and Technological environments that your business operates in.

The Boston Matrix helps you to decide which parts of your business to invest in by examining available opportunities and analysing how each part of your business is performing.

This planning tool examines the 5 forces that determine competitive power, supplier power, buyer power, competitive rivalry, threat of substitution and threat of new entry. This enables you to understand both the strength of current competitive position and any position you are looking to move into.

Strategies that gain competitive advantage – cost leadership, cost focus, differentiation and differentiation focus.

Customer segmentation is the process of identifying and evaluating customer groups that have different distinctive buying behaviour.

The marketing audit is a review of your existing marketing activities. It provides the opportunity to review and appraise your whole marketing activity, enabling you to assess past and present performance as well as to provide the basis for evaluating possible future courses of action.

Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with qualified prospects regardless of their timing to buy, with the goal of earning their business when they are ready (Source: Marketo).

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers (Source: Hubspot).

Social listening is the process of monitoring digital media channels to devise a strategy that will better influence consumers (Source: Trackmaven.com).

Vertical community – in business, a hierarchical supply chain of organisations that buy and sell within a business sector; a many-to-many relationship.

The marketing plan sets the marketing objectives and creates plans, supported by a schedule and a budget to meet them. Activities need to be specific and achievable. To be successful the marketing plan needs to be a living document and frequently reviewed.

The marketing mix consists of product, promotion, price and place (distribution). These categories are used when making marketing decisions.

Integrated communications are marketing activities that are planned to work together, thereby strengthening the effectiveness of the marketing message.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of online marketing that involves both paid search and organic search tactics. The aim of SEM is promoting a website by increasing its visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimisation and advertising. SEM may use search engine optimisation (SEO), that adjusts or rewrites website content to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages or use pay-per-click advertising.

Social media is a means of people interacting and sharing information and ideas in virtual communities or networks. The most widely used social media sites are Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Linkedin and Pinterest. These social online conversations present opportunities and threats to businesses. Getting your social media strategy right will allow you to interact with and influence your market online.

Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking (Source: Oxford Dictionaries).

Thought leadership is becoming an authority on the main issues of your target audience. Communicating your thought leadership allows you to start a conversation with your market and for them to get to know and respect you.

Relationship marketing involves developing marketing relationships, working with partners in the marketplace to gain mutual advantage.

Direct marketing is any marketing channel that contacts potential customers directly. Examples include telephone marketing and mailings.

Marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a cell phone (Source: Mashable).

Video marketing can be defined in digital marketing context as all uses of video contents to promote a brand, product or service (Source: The Digital Marketing Glossary).

A marketing method that changes depending on where potential clients are located (Source: Chron).

Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action (Source: Content Marketing Institute).

The practice of increasing the amount of online sales and leads on a website, without increasing the amount of web visitors (Source: Creative Thirst).

A digital audio or video file or recording, usually part of a themed series, that can be downloaded from a website to a media player or computer (Source: Dictionary.com).

Web content management (WCM) is an application for creating, storing, managing and publishing web page content, which may be in the form of text, audio, graphics, video, etc (Source: Techopedia).

The practice of using data to tailor marketing messages to tightly defined groups and individuals (Source: CMO).

Wearable technology (also called wearable gadgets) is a category of technology devices that can be worn by a consumer and often include tracking information related to health and fitness (Source: Webopedia).

The practice of sharing content from a website on a social media site or application (Source: Oxford Dictionaries).

The process of managing customer-to-customer conversations to engage existing customers and prospects with a brand and so enhance CRM (Source: SmartInsights).

Search marketing is the process of gaining traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts (Source: Search Engine Land).

Short for search engine optimization, the process of increasing the number of visitors to a Web site by achieving high rank in the search results of a search engine (Source: Moz).

A network of people who communicate with one another and with an organisation through interactive tools such as e-mail, discussion boards and chat systems (Source: Business Dictionary).

Customers are no longer just consumers: they’re also producers (Source: Vision Critical).

Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organisations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks (Source: Wikipedia).

Customer experience management (CEM) is the collection of processes a company uses to track, oversee and organise every interaction between a customer and the organisation throughout the customer lifecycle (Source: Tech Target).

Cognitive computing is the simulation of human thought processes in a computerised model (Source: Whatis.com).

Web personalisation is tailoring the presentation of a website’s content to match a specific user’s instructions or preferences (Source: Business Directory).

Viral hacking allows you to collect thousands of email subscribers, quickly and at very low cost through the use of referrals and gamification.

Viral hacking works by using the power of social media and an incentive such as a prize, free access to your product, a download or a discount code. Once people sign up for your contest they are encouraged to share the contest and in return, they increase their chances of winning whatever incentive you have chosen. This process then continues to loop as more people share it and more people sign up.

Key Performance Indicators – these are the agreed measurements of success upon which your marketing activity will be measured.

A buzzword, or catch-phrase, used to describe a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is so large that it’s difficult to process using traditional database and software techniques (Source: Webopedia).

Social media monitoring is the active monitoring of social media channels for information about a company or organisation (Source: Financial Times).

A visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance (Source: MarketingProfs).