Many people consider marketing a superficial pursuit and can handle it with a few quick changes or additions. But Seth Godin argues that marketing is much more than that. It's the whole package, from product design to pricing to customer service. Marketing is also about creating a remarkable story that will resonate with customers. In other words, it's about making the conditions for a successful network effect. If anything touches the market, it's marketing. And that means that marketing is a crucial part of any business.
In this blog, you will find:
What is the 6PM (6-Pillar Marketing) Framework and How Can it Be Used?
ProServeIT Academy: Marketing Course
Since every organization has a limited amount of resources, including money, time, energy and people, we want effectiveness and efficiency. This blog will guide organizations on the 6-Pillar Marketing Framework, which is a simple way to understand marketing and a powerful way to highlight the importance of marketing planning and strategy.
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The How-To Guide for Marketing Your Small Business (and Why It’s Worth It)
The Importance for Small Businesses to Track Consumer Behaviour
What is the 6PM (6-Pillar Marketing) Framework and How Can it Be Used?
A framework for your marketing efforts is essential to staying focused and achieving success. It provides structure and guidance for your marketing activities and helps you to stay on track and avoid getting sidetracked by unrelated tasks. While a framework may seem to limit initially, it provides excellent flexibility. You can modify and evolve your framework as you analyze data and learn more about your target market.
We will go through the Marketing House including the Foundation, Rooms and Roof of the 6PM Framework. We will also share tips and steps for creating a successful marketing strategy that can be tailored to your specific business needs.
The Foundation of the Marketing House: Establish Desired Perception🌈
A Harvard professor says 95% of purchasing decisions are subconscious. When marketing a product to a consumer, it’s most effective to target the subconscious mind. Also, according to HBR Harvard Business Review, your customer lifetime value will be 52% higher when they feel fully connected and satisfied and perceive brand differentiation. Here are some steps and questions for you to think about on how to communicate with your customers more effectively.
⚒️ Three steps to strengthen your brand to your customers
A strong brand will not only attract new customers but also keep existing customers coming back. Here are three key steps to strengthening your brand: self-awareness, emotions, and purpose.
☑️ Step 1. Self-awareness: identify your vision and mission
• Vision: Where the company is going. It's what the future looks like if goals and intentions are accomplished.
• Mission: What the company does, who it serves and the roadmap to making the vision become tangible.
☑️ Step 2. Emotions: what do you want your target audience to feel when they encounter your organization/brand?
☑️ Step 3. Brand purpose: the true reason for your organization’s existence
• Purpose: Why you are doing the work you are doing
📝 Four questions to check your branding effort
Four questions can help you to identify your organization's core competencies, target audience, and the emotions your brand evokes. Understanding these things allows you to create a more effective branding strategy that resonates with consumers.
☑️ What are your core competencies?
• What key achievements thus far can create credibility and trust? Testimonials? Certifications? Awards? Case studies?
• What do you do better than your competitors? Quality? Speed? Flexibility? Price? Patent?
☑️ What problems are you solving?
• What tangible benefits do you bring to your customers? Achieving efficiency – cost and/or time? Signalling social status? Having peace of mind?
☑️ Who is your target audience?
• Some points for consideration for business-to-business (B2B) organizations: geographic locations, industries, job functions (departments and seniority), size of companies, revenue, etc.
• Some points for consideration for business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations: age, family status, educational background, income level, location, previous purchase history and habits, etc.
☑️ What emotions does your brand bring up in your target audience?
• How do you want people to feel when encountering your brand, working with you, or using your products? Confident? Happy? Relaxed? Proud? Healthy?
The Rooms of the Marketing House: Creating and Executing your Marketing Strategy 🚪
It's important to have a clear and well-executed marketing strategy to attract your target audience, engage your attracted audience, delight them, and grow with your delighted audience.
🧭 4 Steps to create your Marketing Strategy
☑️ Step 1. Know short-term and long-term business objectives.
💡 No more than 3 short-term objectives are best to not lose your focus!
☑️ Step 2. Establish marketing objectives, aligned with your overall organization’s objectives.
☑️ Step 3. Create your marketing strategy.
☑️ Step 4. Define the key results and key indicators to measure.
📝 Start Your Marketing Strategy with these Four Questions
☑️ What are your business objectives?
Set three business objectives for this fiscal year’s goals and set your 3 to 5-year goals separately.
• Fiscal year’s objectives
• 3 to 5-year goals
☑️ What are your marketing objectives?
Think about what marketing’s role is in achieving your business objectives.
• Fiscal year’s marketing objectives: set 3 marketing objectives according to the fiscal year’s objectives.
• 3 to 5-year marketing objectives: Set 3 long-term marketing objectives according to the long-term business objectives.
☑️ What marketing activities should you execute to achieve the marketing objectives?
Think about 3 marketing activities to achieve each marketing objective.
☑️ What are the key results and key indicators to measure?
Think about what you need to measure as the key result and the key indicators so you can track your marketing effort.
The Roof of the Marketing House: Working with Your Data 📜
Here you can analyze data as you work on marketing and make future decisions based on your analyzed data. Here are three tips you can use when starting your marketing data journey.
Three Tips to Start your Data Journey
Once you have a good understanding of your starting point, you can identify the areas where you need to make changes. And here are some tips including:
💡 Set a baseline: What data do you have?
💡 Identify the needs: What data can you (and can you not) collect and measure? What tools do you have, and do you need them?
💡 Be creative: How else can you collect the necessary data?
These three tips help ensure you collect the data you need to make informed decisions about your marketing efforts. Don't let Marketing Technology overwhelm you – use it to your advantage, but don't forget to think outside the box.
ProServeIT Academy: Marketing Course
We encourage CEOs and their C-suite executives to think of brand experience through two lenses: through a customer perspective and an employee experience perspective. ProServeIT Academy’s course, Marketing, is all about the customer experience, and designing customer experience is marketing's most important responsibility.
Join Mihae to explore a framework and tools you can apply right away to have your marketing activities fulfill this daunting yet exciting responsibility and bring you the ROI you are looking for. Her second class will take place on November 15th. Register for the course here.
Content from: ProServeIT Academy 2022 Microsoft Marketing Course 1 by Mihae Ahn
Edited by: Betty Quon & Hyun-Jin Im
