Why marketing strategies are important
According to the University of Lincoln (Nancholas, 2023), the average person sees 4,000-10,000 advertisements a day, a lot of them before you even leave your house. A marketing strategy will allow you to raise awareness for the brand/product, without a marketing strategy anything your selling with most likely not sell. Advertising your product is making sure people know what your product or service is and if they were to buy it, they would choose yours. Marketing strategies are everywhere in our lives now, from logos on products around your house, flyers through your postbox or even adverts played on TV, Radio or on your phone. In today’s digital age it is almost impossible to escape marketing and having your brand blasted everywhere is making sure everyone is aware of your product/service.
Different Types of marketing strategies
- Social Media Marketing – The practice of using social media platforms to promote your products/services. E.g. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Etc. (Hayes, A. 2024)
- SEO – Essentially the war of getting whatever it is you’re promoting to the top of search engine results. For example, naming a company something like “Rice” would be an SEO nightmare as if you google Rice you’ll get Rice as the result and would be very difficult to find your company from there. (Goodwin, D. 2023)
- Word of mouth – Pretty much explains itself, your marketing works by simply being part of conversations. This could be through people recommending your product/service or even someone saying something negative. On social media, For example, you often see companies or influencers starting controversies on purpose to get the result of people talking about them, therefore making more and more people aware of them. (Hayes, A. 2024b)
Examples of bad marketing
Dove’s Facebook Advert
Honestly, I don’t even know what they were going for here but the result obviously got a lot of attention for being pretty blatantly racist. This advert was shown around Facebook and was quickly met with an outraged reaction from people with many news platforms picking up the story. (BBC, 2017)
Air BnB “Floating Houses”
On the surface, this just looks like an advert for a floating type of boat house on water that you can rent out on Air BnB. However, this email was sent out during Hurricane Harvey was flooding and destroying many parts of Houston. I feel like anyone can see that given the timing of this post it was very much seen as insensitive and caused a bit of an outrage online. (Billington, J. 2017)
Examples of good marketing
KFC ran out of chicken
In 2018, KFC did the unthinkable and managed to run out of chicken in most of their restaurants in the UK. This was obviously a huge story back then and many people were very upset about the news. KFC came back with the advert below, which I think because it has a bit of humour mixed with a sincere apology and a solution is the perfect way to deal with an issue like this. (BBC, 2018)
Spotify and the streams of “All I Want For Christmas Is You”
This advert quite simply shows the difference in the streams throughout the months of the year for the very popular christmas song “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. I really like this advert because it’s not only hilarious showing the difference in the streams through making a picture of Mariah Carey massive, but it’s advertising Spotify Wrapped which is a event at the end of the year where everyone can see their streaming habits of the last year. Showing a random stat like this gets people excited to see they’re wrapped for the year. (The Drum, 2019)
Examples of marketing strategies
Apple’s Exclusive Eco-System
One of my favourite marketing moves of all time is Apple’s Eco-System, basically guilt tripping you into buying exclusively apple products so you can have continuity across all your devices. This strategy is fittingly called an Exclusive Ecosystem and by making it so everything is simple and works not only with your own apple products but also other peoples is a brilliant way to keep people using and purchasing your products in a market which is flooded by choice. (Loboyko, M. 2021)
Another big example of this is with iMessage, which apple has infamously locked away for iPhone users only. This makes it so people who use another phone brand can’t contact iPhones through iMessage, which when iMessage is the main messaging app and one of the most popular communication apps of all time would make you feel like you were missing out on something big if you didn’t have an iPhone.
People also buy apple because it’s marketed as a premium product. People are more likely to buy an iPhone over an android phone because it feels higher quality and more premium, therefore to consumers it feels more durable and top of the line.
Marketing strategy
My main idea is helping a younger audience understand different exhibition items and stuff around the museum through easier short form videos to tailor to shortening attention spans.
- QR codes next to the exhibit
- TikTok
Trend-Aware
Trend-Aware are a group of consumers who see the growing trends or the latest technologies and essentially see what the future is. At the National Science and Media Museum Trend-Awares were the 2nd biggest segment with 21,000
Referencing
Nancholas, B. (2023). Why are marketing strategies important? [online] University of Lincoln. Available at: https://online.lincoln.ac.uk/why-are-marketing-strategies-important/.
Hayes, A. (2024). What Is Social Media Marketing? [online] Investopedia. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-media-marketing-smm.asp.
Goodwin, D. (2023). What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization? [online] Search Engine Land. Available at: https://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo.
Hayes, A. (2024b). Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Meaning and Uses in Business. [online] Investopedia. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/word-of-mouth-marketing.asp.
BBC (2017). Dove apologises for ‘racist’ Facebook advertising campaign. BBC News. [online] 8 Oct. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-41542818.
Billington, J. (2017). Airbnb blunder advertises floating accommodation as Hurricane Harvey floods Houston. [online] International Business Times UK. Available at: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/airbnb-blunder-advertises-floating-accommodation-hurricane-harvey-floods-houston-1637085.
BBC (2018). KFC’s apology for running out of chicken is pretty cheeky. [online] BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-43169625#:~:text=In%20the%20ad%2C%20KFC%20said [Accessed 30 Sep. 2024].
The Drum (2019). Spotify unwraps the decade’s odd listening habits with another billboard campaign. [online] The Drum. Available at: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/12/05/spotify-unwraps-the-decades-odd-listening-habits-with-another-billboard-campaign.
Loboyko, M. (2021). The Apple Ecosystem Business Model: Selling Experiences through Devices. [online] Medium. Available at: https://productcoalition.com/the-apple-ecosystem-business-model-selling-experiences-through-devices-85df319cfa3d.