Understanding the Marketing Matrix
What do you think marketing is?
We think there’s three buckets in this marketing matrix. And we’re going to go deeper in to these three topics, or buckets, here.
Those three buckets are:
- Branding and Awareness
- Customer Acquisition
- Loyalty and Advocacy
Branding and Awareness: First, what is your identity? Your identity is the logo, the symbols, what people see. But it’s also education. I always say “awareness is not just a recognition of your logo and your name, but an understanding of what it is you do or provide.” That education piece might be as short as a 15-30 second video, it may be an image. Whatever it is, in order to have that true awareness, it takes repetition.
You’ve probably heard over and over (I know my staff has heard it ad nauseum) that quote from the movie Joy: “You tell somebody something once, they don’t listen. Four times, they still don’t listen. It takes nine times before they begin to listen.” That’s the awareness piece that you have to repeat over and over and over and over. And that’s why you hear McDonald’s commercials all the time on the radio, or you see Coca-Cola ads continuously on TV.
Next piece is Customer Acquisition. (Now, keep in mind you may be doing a little bit of each of these three phases at once, but your focus changes depending on whatever campaign you’re on.) Everybody tries to jump right in to customer acquisition. If you don’t have brand equity, it takes longer if you want to jump straight in to customer acquisition in your social media (because you haven’t been social yet!). There are times where that works, (and we’ll talk about that in coming weeks) but customer acquisition is all about how you start getting them in to the funnel.
Now they understand or recognize your logo, understand what it is you do. A lot of time you’re pitching to a certain market, but sometimes there’s no desire, there’s no need yet. Once you get in to customer acquisition, you’re finding folks that desire or need your product or service.
This will get you in consideration mode. And sometimes it takes multiple touches. A great example is when I used to sell cars. They’re in buying mode, they know they need a car, they want a new car, and sometimes it takes multiple touches, and the salesperson that followed up the most wound up getting that purchase.
You’re got them to the consideration point, where they’re thinking about your vehicle, your product or your service. And it can take some time. The longer or the bigger the price tag of that product or service, the consideration phase is longer. So you have to have multiple drips.
You have retargeting and remarketing in the online space. And we’ll talk more about retargeting and remarketing, but those are the little ads you see pop up all the time after you go to a website, look at some luggage or something, go back on Facebook and you go “Wow! There’s the exact luggage I was just looking at!” Great eTailers and marketers understand they need to show that to you again because there’s a long consideration phase, particularly on the higher-priced items.
At the end of the day, you want conversion. What a lot of folks don’t understand is that in this customer acquisition phase conversion doesn’t always mean purchase. That’s the ultimate conversion, that’s what you obviously want; you want customers. But that first conversion may be a like, a download, a “give me your email to learn more”. Understanding all those conversions is part of the customer acquisition phase.
Lastly, (sometimes you way want to start here, because you don’t have a huge budget) is Loyalty and Advocacy. That’s for people who are already your customers. You want them buying more frequent from you; going to your restaurant maybe instead of once a month, twice a month, three times a month, or even weekly if that’s your play. You want them to prefer going there to any other place. It’s preference.
Some things you can’t be loyal to. With restaurants, it’s very difficult to be the only place they go. But maybe brands; I’m pretty loyal to UnderArmour as far as sports gear goes. There’s only one other brand that I’ll use, because certain things they just don’t carry. I don’t really but Nike stuff anymore. That’s loyalty, not just preference. It’s not “Oh, it’s on the rack” or “There’s something nice”; it’s more “I will only do this”.
It’s like we drink a lot of caffeine in this place, and we always argue about what’s the best energy drink. For me, it’s Monster. I only drink Monster. Period. It’s not “If they don’t have Monster I’ll drink a Red Bull.” No. I only drink Monster. That’s loyalty. You want to get to that.
Ultimately, you want raving fans. You want people talking about you on a regular basis, endorsing you, telling their friends at will, where they don’t even need encouragement. They love the product so much they’re just advocates for you.
These are the three things you need to consider when you run a campaign, whether social media, a video, a commercial, a print ad, whatever the case may be. These are the three buckets and if you don’t understand where you are in the Marketing Matrix, you’re not going to accomplish it.
Until next time, be successful and stay social!
You can also watch the full video here.
