What Is Marketing? Definition, Strategies, And Benefits
Marketing helps you promote your business to consumers online, so you can earn more sales and revenue. On this page, we’ll explore the ins and outs of marketing and answer the following questions:
- What is marketing?
- How does marketing work?
- Why is marketing important?
- What is a marketing strategy?
- What are the types of marketing strategies?
So, just keep reading to learn the definition of marketing and get all of your burning questions answered!
Bonus: Did we mention that WebFX is a leading digital marketing agency? Our team of experts has more than 28 years of experience creating revenue-driving marketing campaigns.
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What is marketing?
Marketing is defined as the action of promoting and selling products and services. It can include advertising, market research, competitor analysis, and much more.
How does marketing work?
Now that you know the answer to your main question, “what is marketing,” you might be wondering how it works.
With marketing, you can promote your products and services through multiple channels to reach your target audience. As a result, you can earn more sales and revenue for your business.
For example, you can promote your brand on:
- Social media platforms
- Search engines like Google
- Websites
- Apps
- And more
You can also conduct market research and competitor analysis to understand how you can ensure your business stands out online to attract more potential customers.
Why is marketing important?
So, why is marketing important?
If you want to attract new customers and drive more sales for your company, investing in marketing is essential. Marketing is the key to helping more consumers discover your business, increasing your brand awareness, and generating more leads and conversions.
Are you still not convinced that marketing is important for your business? Then check out these reasons why marketing is essential:
- Drive more traffic to your website: Marketing can help you boost your online visibility in search engines, social media, and more. As a result, more consumers will discover your website, increasing your web traffic.
- Reach your ideal customers: Reaching the consumers who are most likely to purchase your products and services is critical to increasing your sales. With marketing, you can take advantage of audience targeting features that help you ensure your promotions reach your ideal customers.
- Generate more conversions and sales: Marketing helps you grow your business. Implementing campaigns that engage your audience and encourage clicks and conversions can help you continuously acquire new customers.
Marketing is an excellent way to reach more members of your target audience and outshine your competitors to drive more revenue for your business.
What is a marketing strategy?
A marketing strategy describes a series of actions that use marketing channels to achieve various goals. Your marketing strategy should suit your company, so you can achieve the results that matter most to you
Whether you want to increase your rankings in search engines like Google or boost your brand awareness using social media platforms, a marketing strategy will help you complete those tasks.
What are the types of marketing strategies?
Now that you know the answer to the question, “what is a marketing strategy,” let’s dive into the different types of marketing strategies you can use.
Check out some common types of marketing strategies below:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on your website’s presence in search engines. An SEO strategy involves various techniques that can help you achieve a top spot in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
SEO can involve optimizations such as:
- Improving your page load speed
- Inserting keywords throughout your website
- Creating custom content
- Improving your website user experience
- And more
Increasing your search engine rankings is essential because it boosts your online visibility, so more consumers can discover your website when they conduct a search online.
Plus, 75% of users don’t go past the first page of search results, which means getting your website to rank on page one is a must.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
PPC advertising is another excellent strategy that can help you increase your brand awareness and drive more sales. That’s because PPC ads display at the top of the SERPs and are one of the first results users will see. In fact, by using PPC ads, you can increase your brand awareness by 80%.
With PPC ads, you bid on keywords and phrases that your audience is searching for online. With a successful bid, plus a high Ad Rank and Quality Score, your ad will appear at the top of the SERPs each time a user searches for that keyword.
Do you need more convincing that PPC is an effective strategy? Then check out these statistics:
- You can earn $2 for every $1 spent on PPC ads
- 32% of companies use PPC ads to sell products directly to consumers
- 46% of page clicks go to the top three PPC ads
PPC advertising is an excellent way to promote your products and services on search engines to drive more sales for your business.
Social media marketing
With more than five billion active users on social media, social media marketing is an excellent opportunity to promote your brand. Social media marketing involves promoting your business, products, and services on social media platforms such as:
With social media marketing, you can interact and engage with your audience, invest in advertisements that appear in users’ newsfeeds, and much more.
Plus, many social media platforms enable you to use audience targeting features to ensure that your advertisements and sponsored posts reach your target audience. For example, you can target specific users based on their:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Interests
- Purchase history
- And more
As a result, your promotions will reach the users most likely to purchase your products or use your services.
Email marketing
Another type of marketing strategy is email marketing. Email marketing is the process of using emails to promote your products and services. Emails are an excellent way to provide more information about your business to your audience to encourage them to convert into customers.
For example, you can use emails to:
- Share business and industry news
- Promote new products and services
- Share custom content
- And more
You can also use email marketing to generate leads for your company. When you include an email sign-up option on your website, interested users can voluntarily sign up for your emails. As a result, you can build a subscriber list of users who want to learn more about your business.
You can then send them emails with more information about your brand, products, and services to encourage them to make a purchase.
Content marketing
Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves creating a variety of valuable content that delivers relevant and helpful information to your audience.
There are several types of content you can create, such as:
- Blog posts
- Informative articles
- Detailed guides
- Videos
- Infographics
- And more
When you create custom content that provides value to your audience, you can establish your brand as an expert in your field. As more users read and watch your content, they will trust your brand, leading to more sales as a result.
Content marketing can also help you improve your search engine rankings. That’s because you can insert keywords and phrases throughout your content that your audience searches for online. As a result, your website will have more opportunities to rank at the top of the results, so more users can find your business online.
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Implement an effective marketing strategy that drives revenue with WebFX
What is marketing? Let’s recap. Marketing is the action of promoting and selling products and services to help you boost your sales and revenue.
If you’re ready to start using effective marketing strategies that drive revenue for your company, WebFX can help!
At WebFX, our team will take care of developing, implementing, and managing custom marketing campaigns, so you can get back to your other business tasks. Plus, your dedicated account manager will keep you informed every step of the way with frequent meetings and transparent reports, so you always stay in the loop.
In just the past few years, we’ve helped businesses just like yours drive over $10 billion in revenue. And we can help your company achieve incredible results too.
Speak with one of our strategists today by calling 888-601-5359 or contact us online to learn more about how our top-tier digital marketing services can drive revenue for your company. We can’t wait to help your company grow!