Commonly Asked Marketing Questions

Whether you’re a seasoned marketing veteran or just starting out in your professional career, you have questions. Sometimes, those questions trace all the way back to the basics of marketing and a further understanding of the terminology that we all use on a day to day basis.

What is content marketing?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

How can it help address your target audiences throughout the customer purchase journey?

Content should address the motivations and needs of the customer at various points of their process, says Zontee Hou of Media Volery, so that it strengthens their positive feelings about the brand, heightens their likelihood to convert, and increases their customer lifetime value.

How does it drive revenue?

It starts by building a strong business case that doesn’t just directly attack people, their teams, or their budgets.

Michael Brenner of Marketing Insiders says to answer the content marketing ROI question for your business, you need to build a solid case based on a deep understanding of your business. What is your business’ average marketing ROI and how can content marketing achieve a higher return? The answer comes down to understanding your content costs, usage, and performance.

From there, you have a few paths to building a solid business case that will allow you to reach new customers, engage them with your brand in a meaningful way, and then convert them to new sales and long-term relationships that provide real ROI.

How can we make something “go viral”?

There’s no guaranteed formula. But no matter the industry, you can increase your chances if your content (1) presents a unique story, idea, or dataset (2) in a way that directly addresses a pain point or creates an emotional response in your core audience and (3) in an engaging format. And that’s not enough. You have to promote the heck out of it.

What is marketing strategy development?

Marketing strategy development is the stage of the new-product development process in which a three-part marketing strategy plan is developed:

How does marketing strategy work?

Define product position, including target market size, structure, and purchasing behavior. Identify initial sales goals in terms of market share and profits.

Specify year-one price and distribution strategy, and marketing budget.

Describe ongoing marketing-mix strategy and future sales and profits.

What’s the difference between a marketing strategy and marketing tactics?

Your tactics are the execution of your strategy, according to Coschedule, not the strategy itself.

What is a marketing campaign?

An advertising or marketing campaign is a set of coordinated, specific activities that are based on a common theme and are designed to promote a product, service or business through different advertising media.

How does it work?

Great marketing campaigns follow a consistent theme and promote a single or focused idea or goal.

An example from Hubspot:

For example, every Nike advertisement you see or hear on the way to work probably isn’t part of a campaign. But, if you see a Nike billboard, scroll past a Nike sponsored Instagram post, and receive a Nike email all promoting the same product … you’ve definitely witnessed a marketing campaign.

What’s the difference between a marketing campaign and an advertising campaign?

Advertising is a component of marketing. Marketing is how a company plans to raise awareness of their brand and convince customers to make a purchase, while advertising is the process of creating the persuasive messages around these broad goals.

In terms of campaigns, an advertising campaign might be a facet of a bigger marketing campaign strategy. Returning to Hubspot’s example, if Nike were campaigning about the release of a new product, their advertising would be one piece of their broader marketing efforts, which might also encompass email, social media, and paid search.

So, campaigns are focused, acute marketing efforts to reach a singular goal. Despite their simple definition, marketing campaigns can take a lot of work.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is a tactic that taps into the growth of social networks, encouraging users to adopt and pass along widgets or other content modules created by a brand, or to add a brand to the user’s social circle of friends.

Why is it so important?

Marketing Insider Group says social platforms help you connect with your customers, increase awareness about your brand, and boost your leads and sales. With more than three billion people around the world using social media every month, the users and engagement on major platforms just keep increasing.

How do I create a social media marketing strategy?

A social media strategy is a document outlining your social media goals, the tactics you will use to achieve them and the metrics you will track to measure your progress.

Your social media marketing strategy should also list all of your existing and planned social media accounts along with goals specific to each platform you’re active on.

According to Hootsuite, a good social media plan should define the roles and responsibilities within your team and outline your reporting cadence.

Do I need to segment my social media strategy by platform?

Probably. In short, your strategy will differ based on which social networks your audience spends their time on and the best times to post on those platforms. Here is a breakdown of social media platforms from Hubspot on their total users, audience, industry impact and what they are best used for.

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube

Snapchat

Pinterest

What is email marketing?

Email is an online communication format that involves sending digital messages from an author to one or more recipients (i.e., email addresses) across the internet or other computer networks.

How does it work?

Email marketing is simply “marketing via email.”

How can I understand email marketing metrics?

Total email click-throughs as a metric attempts to answer the question, ‘How many times did a person click on a link or multiple links within this email?’ This may or may not include clicks on unsubscribe links or other links and you may find it helpful to view click-through reporting by individual link. This metric is a whole number in the form ‘100,000’ or as an email clickthrough rate percentage in the form ‘10%.’ The denominator is email delivered and this percentage may exceed 100%.

Unique email click-throughs as a metric attempts to answer the question, ‘How many unique people clicked on a link or multiple links within this email?’ To illustrate, if one person clicked on two links, this would only count as one unique clickthrough. If one person clicked on the same link twice, this would only count as one unique clickthrough. This metric is a whole number in the form ‘100,000’ or as a unique email click-through rate percentage in the form ‘10%.’ The denominator is email delivered.

Does it work?

When you want to communicate something about your brand or sell your stuff, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to do so.

In fact, Mailchimp recently highlighted a 2015 study by the DMA that found for every $1 spent, email has an average $38 return on investment (ROI). When shoppers are ready to buy something, they often look for emails from their favorite stores.

What is event marketing?

Event marketing is planning, organizing, and executing an event for the purpose of promoting a brand, product, or service. Events can take place in-person or online, and companies can either host an event, attend as an exhibitor, or participate as a sponsor.

What are the benefits?

Event marketing generates business, provides one-on-one customer engagement, builds brand awareness and encourages product and industry education.

What is the importance of using event technology?

According to recent study from Bizzabo, an event technology company, event technology can assist marketers in streamlining operations and saving time. Moving forward, marketers hope to see further advancements in the ability of platforms to sync data and solve a variety of needs.

In addition to integrating with existing software and tools, event technology is also helping marketers drive operational efficiency. The majority (89%) of those who use event software believe that they save time when planning events.
The majority (89%) of event technology users save roughly 200 hours per year. In addition, some (20%) respondents see 360 hours or more saved per year with event technology—a 60% increase in hours saved from 2019.

Moving forward, most marketers (19%) believe API and integration options hold the greatest potential for improvement. This is followed by end-to-end functionality (14%) and branding and customization (13%).

What are SMART goals when implementing a marketing strategy?

SMART goals stand for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Keeping your goals SMART helps you avoid running with vague goals like “bring in leads.”

SMART goals have a dual purpose: to give you direction when planning and implementing your event and to help you decide whether or not your event was a success (and if it wasn’t, to know how to improve).

An example of a SMART event marketing goal Hubspot references would be to “grow our prospective leads list for our new product by 100 names by the end of the event.”

Are you looking for more definitions? The AMA partners with Common Language Marketing Dictionary to provide you with a terminology resource for your continued education.