To understand ‘marketing’ first people need to learn how broad the area us, and when they say ‘marketing’ what parts apply to their business and goals. Areas of marketing skills shift depending on channel and products. Often people specialise, with few people having general ability across many areas. For example, marketing skillsets for B2B products typically change relative to B2C, or for speciality fields like finance or pharma vs FMCG.
Common fields/categories of marketing include:
- Designer
- Advertiser
- Copywriter
- Analyst
- Social Media
- Product
- PR
- Events
- Affiliate
- SEO
These can be further sub categorised as well as all sorts of niche categories.
Perhaps having made it more confusing, I would say for most business owners and manager the 2 key areas to learn are: 1) Analytics and 2) Copywriting.
So why are these areas of marketing so important?
For Analytics, this is the fundamental as its the results. If you are running a business, understanding analytics lets you know what to look for, and its meaning. Having good knowledge of core analytics as well as direct access will give you a huge leg up vs most non-marketing types in access and interpreting this information. It good to have this direct access for speed of finding data and occasionally staff or agencies will try to push the best story and their successes, and its good to be able to look into data yourself. The best way to learn this is do. Get access to your systems and poke around. Read blogs/forums when needed and ask questions when you are unsure.
3 keys are to focus on are:
- The end point of ‘what matters’. Analytics options are endless and you can measure and spend time viewing only so much. For your regular tracked analytics I recommend to spend less time on ‘the journey’ metrics, look for the key ‘end result’ variables. You can always dig into the journey as you need to ad-hoc but with the depth of data we have today, so many people get distracted by the detail rather than the result.
- Monitor what your can change. Don’t run weekly stats if said stats wont influence your weekly decisions. There is so much data out so use your time well. Focus on what will make you change tactics or strategy. Leave the rest for ad-hoc reviews or the guys working at the day-to-day detail level.
- Look at trends not data points. Seeing where things are going is often more important as the number itself. If something is on the rise you can choose to focus effort on other areas as that area is being fixed, or you can spot problems before they are below the absolute threshold that might alert you if you are monitoring numbers over trends.
For Copywriting, this is the core art of marketing IMO. So many people jump to how the website/ads look but its best to start with what you want to say and build the ad, website or other design around that. Great copy is amazingly difficult, especially for conversion activity. Some personalities often go with the more good information you provide the better, and this is rarely the truth in marketing content. Keep messages succinct and single minded.
I would say for learning copywriting do 2 things, 1) read “Ogilvy on Advertising” and 2) look at ads from companies known for great advertising, especially if its in your product category. Companies like Coke, VW, Guinness, De Beers, Apple etc. Consider why these work so well and how this can apply to messaging that will resonate with your audience.
If you’d like to learn more about marketing or what YayClicks can do for you please reach out and we are happy to have an initial no-cost chat.
