This article is a part of the series that I am writing on marketing while learning and implementing it in public. Learn more about it here.

Any act of communication between a business and the outside world is marketing.

• Our landing page
• Our social media post
• Our offers
• Our product

Everything is marketing.

In words of marketing guru Peter Drucker - "Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy."

To get a customer to buy, there are two crucial steps that marketing should do -

1. Improve reach

Improve discoverability and awareness about the business to increase reach.

2. Build trust

Build a level of trust that the potential customers feel comfortable getting in to a relationship (become a user of the product).

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Digging deeper into reach

Here are a few marketing activities that can improve reach and discoverability.

1. Content Marketing

Before we look for specific means and tactics of doing content marketing. Let's understand why it works.

At the very core of the internet is inter-linked content. Whether you do a query on search engines, scroll through feed on social media or watch videos on youtube, even the journey to getting to utility products starts with searching and engaging with content.

People are looking for content that does atleast one of these two things -

1. Educate them - They want to be educated on the problems that they have
2. Entertain them - They want to be entertained

In marketing, when they say provide value to attract customers, they mean either educate them or entertain them.

Good marketing either educates or entertains potential customers.

When people relevant to our domain look for the solution to their problems, we have to be present there with our content. This makes our business inbound discoverable. It is also the most valuable, meaningful and long term result yielding form of marketing.

Of course, this needs a deep understanding of what our customers are looking for and where they are looking for it.

🛑 Taking this approach of marketing has a few deterrents -

1. We have to really know what our customers are looking for and where.
2. It's a long game. It takes about 6-9 months for this effort to start producing results.
3. Producing good content consistently without seeing immediate success is hard.

📈 That said, it also has multifold advantages -

1. The more content we produce, the larger the compounding effect is. Over a period of time, small gains accumulate and result in massive traffic.
2. Just the act of producing content and seeing which one performs well give us insight into our customers which is extremely valuable to base our business and product strategies on.
3. When we educate, it builds trust with potential customers, which we will talk about in the next section.

At an execution level, there are many tactics which I will write about in detail as I go about implementing them.

2. Ads

Publishing ads on various platforms can result in quick, short-term discoverability. It's good to try it out and see the results.

It does its job of making our business discoverable but it doesn't really build any trust.

3. Events

There is a range of events from product launches to webinars that help in improving visibility.

A product launch, done right, puts us in front of the customers. It's not a sustainable stream of traffic but is good to get the word out.

Webinars are a great opportunity to educate people, results in content that we can use over and over. Gives facetime with customers and can be immensely valuable to them.

There are some other ways of becoming more discoverable e.g. PR, affiliates, influencer marketing etc. I am skipping going in detail about them right now.

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2. Building trust

People buy stuff from the businesses that they trust. Trust is built by being honest, caring, listening, being vulnerable, showing proof/reviews/endorsements from others, being helpful and even seeking help.

Once potential customers discover our product, they are seeking reasons on how it solves their problem and why they should trust us.

On the internet, following are the ways to build trust.

1. Landing page.

Landing page is our opportunity to show that we understand their problem and have a solution. Show how the product solves their problems and how it has worked for others.

Potential customers want to feel resonance. Our copy should make them say - "Aah! this is exactly what I have been looking for." It's as if we were listening to their problem one-to-one. Make them feel listened to.

2. Email marketing

Once a potential customer discovers us, they might like what they see but might not buy our product right away. At this point, we must offer them some value in exchange of their email. For e.g. an ebook, access to webinar etc.

We can use this email list to consistently educate, entertain, update and engage them.

It's all about providing value here. A good way to think about value here again is simply - educate or entertain them through emails.

3. Take a stand

Another good way of building trust is to take a stand. We must communicate what we stand for and do it emphatically.

It shows that we care for something larger than our business. That we are a vehicle of change and that we are fighting a status quo. It makes people passionate about what we are doing. They identify with the business more.

Good ways of doing this -

1. Run a campaign

   Put a dedicated page on website on what we stand for and what we are doing to make the change happen.

   A brilliant example of this is Patagonia, a clothing company, putting a section of wornwear on their website, to cut down consumption. It shows that they truly stand for the environment and the planet.

2. Build a community

   Build a space for people who care about the cause that we stand for, to come together and help each other. Build that townhall which brings people together under a roof, be a unifying force. It shows that we care for a change in the world and are willing to help people who want to participate in the change.

   Building community they say is not a marketing strategy but a business strategy. We should do it because we really care for this particular cause deeply. It again shows that we have a soul as a business and actually care.

4. Show proof

One of the most powerful tools in building trust is an endorsement. That is why word-of-mouth and product reviews work.

People trust referrals and endorsements and stories of success. Show testimonials, videos of how our product has helped others.

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Application

Let's apply the concepts above to AltCampus to decide what I need to do to play the marketing game.

Thanks for reading. 🙏🏻