Training session part 2 of Aimee’s journey to learn marketing. If you missed part 1, check it out here. Part 2, here. 🙂

Today we based our discussion on some of the principles enumerated in chapters 9 and 10 of Marketing Management as I continue to learn marketing from John. Any functional marketing strategy begins with lots of brainstorming: Who is your target audience? What are you offering to them? Where are you creating your product or service, and where are you offering it? Why are you selling your product and why should clients buy it? How are you creating, marketing, selling? All of these questions and many more are key to building a solid foundation for any successful business endeavor.

Finding consumers that need and want your product can be a simple or complex process–in today’s easy-access economy of endless options, it is more likely to be fairly complex. Asking the right questions can help us navigate this process with precision and confidence. There are endless markets and endless needs, but analyzing our prospective clients and relevant data on them can give us a better idea of how to proceed with our strategy. It is important to understand our audience with as much precision and detail as possible, even down to variations in consumer behavior among similar groups of people, so that we’re not wasting time and money on campaigns that can be irrelevant in the end.

Learn Marketing by Incorporating the Human Aspect

John also showed me an email campaign that he is currently working on, pointing out various essential components of an effective sales pitch. Though a formulaic approach could feel stale if executed with a strictly technical approach, the human element appears again here to provide nuance and connection. In this context the importance of the foundation also resurfaces, as this type of campaign is much easier to create successfully when we know who we’re talking to and what their needs and likely purchase behaviors will be.

It is crucial that we don’t allow ourselves or our customers to forget that initial foundation, our brand premise. We are able to market ourselves better, create products and services more efficiently, maintain passion and focus in the workplace, and forge lasting mutually-beneficial relationships with clients, when the core principles of our endeavors are constantly at the forefront.