Marketing is getting more challenging than ever; you can reach your targeted audience in numerous ways. Therefore, you need an effective marketing mix strategy to access quick communication channels and attain your business goals. Here is everything you need to know about Media Mix Marketing and how to use a perfect channel blend to reach a wider audience.
Gone are the days when marketing was just about plain billboards and handing out a few pamphlets. With new media and marketing channels cropping up daily, it can become problematic for brands to recognize and hop on the right marketing channels.
While focusing on putting together a perfect media mix can create brand awareness, generate better ROI, and access new markets, it is easier said than done. About 39% of modern-day marketers claim that the most challenging thing about marketing is figuring out an impactful media mix.
However, it can get a little daunting for brands but fret not, we have curated the ultimate guide to media mix marketing. Whether traditional advertising or creative social media marketing, let's understand the dos and don'ts of crafting a vibrant media mix.
A media mix is a blend of channels and methods a brand uses to reach its desired audience. It can include anything from traditional advertising like television ads, billboards, radio, and newspapers to digital marketing techniques like direct emails, social networks, websites, and landing pages.
Whether you realize it or not, your brand, in fact, every brand, has a media mix. It encompasses all the channels through which your product reaches most of your customers. Your media mix can help you immensely in creating brand awareness and targeting a specific audience.
This is why it is essential to optimize your media mix. You can do this by analyzing different marketing channels and their performances. Although it is not an easy process, you can still blend together a perfect media mix to improve your sales and customers.
It is not necessary that you must use a set of all possible marketing techniques to reach your targeted audience. Think of it like this: Suppose Brand X realizes that it reaches most of its customers through digital-only campaigns. Their marketing mix can be a combination of social media, display ads, native advertising, and landing pages.
On the other hand, Brand Y sees traditional advertising as an effective tactic. Their marketing mix can look like transit signage, TV spots, direct mail, brochure, and billboards.
A marketing mix is not only for reaching your audience and building better communication channels; a good marketing mix is important for a company's total ROI and allows brands to experiment in new markets with no risk.
The key to understanding the magic of marketing is to identify your target audience. Thanks to the advent of better business intelligence techniques, knowing your target audience has never been easier.
What took business teams hours of joining their heads over extensive surveys, questionnaires, and statistics, can now be done easily. All you need is a little bit of stalking on Facebook, some help from Google My Business, and a dash of Google Analytics.
Don't get us wrong, the hours spent on surveys are still as important and fruitful as ever. But there are alternative and quicker ways for business owners and marketers to develop a deeper understanding of their target audience.
Here is why a good marketing mix is essential for your brand:
· A good marketing mix is like diversifying your financial portfolio. In the same way, an investor won't put his entire amount into a single risky company; a brand should also not put its entire budget into one marketing method. This will make your marketing strategy more effective while reducing the risk.
· No single marketing strategy is going to boost your ROI. Media mix marketing will give you the freedom and confidence to try different marketing channels with a safety net in place.
· You can never depend on a single channel for your company's marketing. With media mix, even if one of your marketing channels is not performing well, you always have other means to target the audience and balance out the lack of results from drifting channels.
· A media mix helps companies analyze their marketing outcomes. You can get a rough idea of what channels are not generating the required results, and then you can make improved decisions based on this information.
· Media mix marketing will steer you to either optimizing your eliminating the ineffective marketing channels.
For you to better comprehend your media mix, it's imperative that you understand what some of the important elements of marketing are. An effective marketing strategy always starts with the basics.
It is important to understand the basics of targeting an audience and understanding marketing demands before you jump on to anything else. Essentially, a marketing mix refers to the four elaborate and most significant levels of decision-making: product, price, place, and promotion.
Other Ps like people and process were added to the list of these essentials for marketing and decision-making to better understand customer demand, target audience, and networking process.
Let's understand the basic 6 Ps of media mix marketing.
The very first P of the marketing mix is to understand your product. Your product is the main thing to sell to your audience in exchange for cash. Your product can be anything from a service to a physical item. Just bear in mind that you should be the expert on your product. Know everything about it, and by everything, we mean research every aspect of it, including the angle of competitors on this product.
Ask yourself a few questions before you start marketing your product. What is it that I am selling to the target audience? You need to focus on some key product decisions like quality, branding, services, packaging, warranty, functionality, and appearance to make your product stand out.
The biggest mistake people make when it comes to marketing is that they assume they know everything about their product. Assumptions won't take you far, but real knowledge and expertise will. If you want to make better sales, you need to identify how your services or products can fulfill consumer needs.
When marketing your product, you need to tap into that consumer mindset and tell your target audience how your products can address their needs.
Pricing is generally a make or break when it comes to marketing. However, this is a mistake that marketers often make. Under or over-pricing can make a huge difference in your marketing, and it directly relates to your target audience.
Pricing your products requires a lot of work and effort. For starters, you need to determine what the flexible cost for your product or service is. This should include every aspect of pricing for determining an overall cost, including the product's marketed price, discounts, sales, and credit terms.
To sum it up, price determination is an important part of your media mix, and it can immensely change your sales and business dynamics.
The place is one of the most important Ps of marketing. When you have a good product in hand, the first question you should ask yourself is where and how you plan to sell it.
You can distribute your products from a warehouse, sell them in a mall, or focus on e-commerce and online sales. A good marketing mix uses a combination of all these channels. Whatever you choose one thing that you should keep in mind when choosing a media mix is to ensure that the channel you are using is accessible to your target audience.
Another important tip when it comes to media mix marketing is to make your consumers feel like they are getting your products naturally. Do not make marketing look forced. If you do not take care of this, you can risk sinking your ship even before leaving the harbor.
The way customers get your products should feel natural. This is why it is very important to understand your target audience and work according to it. While social media marketing and online sales are great ways to boost ROI, they will be of no use to you if your customer base is not tech-savvy and prefers old-school ways.
After having a precise knowledge of your products, their benefits, and how you are going to sell them, it's time for our favorite part.
Promotions are what marketing is all about. And this is where you can experiment with your creativity and new ideas every day. There are countless platforms and possibilities for promoting a product. These include everything from direct emails and social media marketing to advertising and public relations.
However, promoting a product requires a huge budget sometimes. This is why many companies conduct an ROI before they reach a decision regarding promotions. When it comes to promotion and media mix, you need to identify the following things.
· Ways to determine if your promotion tactics are successful
· How many sales will you need to recover the amount invested?
· What it's going to cost to use the media outlet?
· Your target demographic
· What type of media your target demographic consumes?
Having people who can help you raise your brand from scratch is the most important thing when it comes to a goal-oriented marketing strategy. With the right people on your side, you can really make a difference.
The key to building a good brand is to consider your staff, customers, and yourself. To create a good marketing mix, you will need to be aware of your customer's demands and deliver according to their wishes. This is the reason why the very first step to creating a media mix is to recognize your customers.
Set your targets according to your potential buyers and formulate strategies that will yield helpful marketing information. Another important thing in marketing is to improve and focus on your customer service so that you can gather a loyal customer base who are enthusiastic about your products.
If you are able to retain customers, half of your marketing is done. People believe in word of mouth, and if your products have potential, customer satisfaction can become a highly effective tool for media mix marketing.
Focusing on the selling process is just as important as the experience the customer will get using your product. From the moment a customer sends you an email, interacts with your post, WhatsApp you for an inquiry, or visits your store, you need to make the process as easy and streamlined as possible.
It all sets the basis for your next sale. If you want to make sure that the customer will follow up with another purchase, a super special selling process is an absolute must. Messing up the selling process means possibly losing a good customer.
First off, you need to determine when your intended customer base is most likely to engage with your products. You can use available marketing data and analytics to pinpoint this information.
We understand that it can be a little hard to determine the efficacy of each media outlet, especially billboards and brochures, but a company can figure out a lot by tracking its digital marketing efforts. You can gauge an effective media mix by tracking metrics like click-throughs, views, and opens.
This will allow your company to hone in on the exact tactics and media that are generating sales. This will also help you in improving your overall marketing and increase ROI.
The bottom line is that it is not possible to formulate an effective marketing plan with just one media; you need a media mix to gain customers and target a specific audience. At the same time, a good media mix is not about throwing money to access every marketing channel; you need to evaluate and analyze your sales generators and formulate a media mix that works for your target audience.
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