Marketing: Knowing your business and your audience

What is marketing? It is a way in which businesses advertise their services or goods; but mostly, it’s about understanding your market. That is, finding out who is looking for your service and knowing how to communicate to them. Enticing your market to come to you, and to keep coming back, as well as telling all their friends about you is another important part of this business function.

Critical to any business

Marketing is essential to the success of a business, whatever that business may offer – whether it’s a hip, new cafe or a multimillion-dollar corporation. If you’re not connected to and communicating with your target market, you’re not going to make it.

Who are you?

Part of understanding marketing is not only knowing who your audience is, but who the company you work for is. It’s being intimately familiar with the company’s philosophy, deciphering what makes your service and product amazing. Additionally, knowing what makes your team do what they do is key to delivering the right message to your target audience.

Each staff member plays a part

What makes happy customers come back? You need knowledgeable staff with great customer service skills and a passion for the product. Marketing is making sure that your staff know, and are passionate about, your company philosophy and your product or service. Each member of your team should act as a potential PR spokesperson.

The social media myth

Marketing is not just about having a heap of super-quirky and popular social media streams; it’s determining who your market is and where you find it. Just because social media is such a focus these days, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right path for every business. Marketing is knowing all the right ways to say the right things to the right people.

The rules of attraction

Marketing is about asking yourself - what draws people in? The offering of things that are unique, desirable, and essential should form the basis of your attraction strategy. Marketing is knowing exactly what people are looking for. It’s not saying ‘Here’s our service, come get it’, it’s knowing what people are typing on search engines, which is extremely beneficial. In essence, marketing is turning the noun ‘market’ into an action word. It’s enticing your audience to take action and engage with you.

Want to learn how be a master of marketing? RMIT’s online Master of Marketing degree will help get you there. Speak to one of our Student Enrolment Advisors on 1300 701 171.