توضیحات ای جی

BEC : Marketing -AJ

Hello, this is AJ. Welcome to my commentary. In this commentary I’m just going to walk you through kind of a typical marketing funnel. A marketing funnel is sort of like a marketing system, you know starting from the beginning all the way to the end desired result.

So a marketing funnel at the top, you’re usually starting with the idea that you want to generate prospects. We talked about prospects, those are potential customers. Usually they’re part of some kind of target demographic. ‘Demographic’ means kind of characteristic, sort of target characteristics. So it might be age. It might be gender. It could be location, interests, hobbies, lots of different things. The second goal is to actually create sales. Those tend to be the two big goals, the final end-point goals for most marketing campaigns. Again, a campaign is a series of actions. One ad is not a campaign it’s just an ad. It’s a single promotion, but a series of ads that’s a campaign.

That is a marketing campaign.

Now, in very traditional advertising there’s a little catch phrase. It’s an acronym, actually.

It’s AIDA and a lot of advertising people will still talk about this. ‘A’ means attention, that’s the first step they’re usually trying to accomplish. In an advertisement they’re trying to get your attention, right? The big problem with a lot of advertising is that people see so much of it now that they don’t really focus on it. They don’t pay attention to it.

That’s why ads in some way are always trying to get attention. That’s the first thing.

One of the things that advertisers or advertising directors will look at will be circulation.

So if they’re going to advertise in a newspaper they want to know the circulation of that newspaper. That just means how many people read the newspaper. Circulation is how many people possibly could see the ad.

The television version of this would be ratings. What are the ratings of this show? What are the ratings of this timeslot? A ‘timeslot’ means just a specific time when your ad will show. So the first thing they want to see is just the numbers, the basic circulation numbers or ratings numbers so they know how much attention can they get, how much potential attention can they get.

The next thing they’re going to focus on is interest. That ‘I’ stands for interest. If they get your attention, next they have to keep your interest. You have to be interested in the product, interested in the ad. There’s kind of some slang that goes along with this, this idea of buzz or going viral. ‘Buzz’ just means excitement, interest, interest in your product, interest in an ad. Sometimes ads will use humor or do something crazy or strange. They’re trying to generate a kind of buzz, a kind of interest.

If something goes ‘viral’, that means it starts to spread by itself. That’s the dream situation for a marketer or an advertiser is that people start to share their advertisement for free. So let’s say it’s a funny ad. Maybe you would send the YouTube clip to your friends for free. Well, now they’re getting more circulation and more attention for free.

They don’t have to pay for those extra people.

Another thing you might hear in this kind of situation with this kind of advertising is USP.

What is the USP? What’s your USP? ‘USP’ means unique selling proposition. It’s a statement usually, a short statement that describes your product and what’s special about it. That’s the unique part, a unique selling proposition. It’s a sentence. A ‘proposition’ means a statement, ‘selling’ means it’s a statement that will sell, that will persuade and ‘unique’ means special. It’s a single sentence that says something special about your product that makes people want to buy it, so that’s USP.

The next step in the process is the creation of desire. So you’ve got their attention, they’re interested, now you create desire. They’re really interested, now they want to know more. They want to know about this product and maybe even get it. They want it.

This is where you’ll start seeing things like features and benefits. These are kind of the two main things that get described in a lot of advertising.

1. ‘Features’ are what your product or service actually does. It’s kind of more of a description, a basic description.

2. ‘Benefits’, that’s how your product or service will help, will benefit the person. I’ll give you an example let’s say with computers.

A feature would be this computer has 100 megabytes of memory. That’s a feature, right? It’s just a basic description. A benefit would be this computer will help you get more work finished in a shorter time because it’s very easy to use. That’s a benefit.

Some ads or some marketing will stress benefits, some will stress features and others just branding. So ‘branding’ kind of advertising, that’s just really more about values and emotions and they don’t talk so specifically about the product or service.

Then the final step in the process ideally, is action. This is what they really want, what marketers really want, advertisers really want, is for you to take some action. That action might be that you contact the company to get more information. It might be that you call to make an appointment or it might be that you go to the store and buy something from them. So, action is the final most important step in this funnel.

You can see it’s a funnel because it starts at the top with attention. You’re going to get a lot of people. You can get a lot of people’s attention, but then how many of those people will be interested. It will be a smaller number. How many will actually desire and want your products. That’s an even smaller number. How many will actually take action and do something. That’s an even smaller number. So in each step of the process it’s a smaller and smaller number. That’s why it’s called a funnel. It gets narrower at the bottom.

So with action the key kinds of phrase or terms you’ll hear are response rate or conversion rate. It has the same idea. What it means is how many people actually responded or took action. So if 1,000 people see your advertisement and 100 of them actually call or respond then that’s a 10% response rate, which would actually be very, very good in advertising. With online advertising this is typically called a conversion rate.

It means if a lot of people visit your website how many actually will buy something and so that’s always a smaller percentage. It’s always less than 100%.

Finally, the game of all of this or the challenge of all this is something that’s called ROI, which is return on investment, return on investment. So at the end of a marketing campaign or during a marketing campaign you have two basic numbers. Number one is your spending, your ad spend, how much money you’re spending on the advertising, on the marketing and then the other number is how much revenue did you get as a result, so how much money did you make.

So if people buy your product or take an action and then they eventually buy that’s a certain amount of revenue, right? The ideal thing, what all advertisers what, is they want to get more money back then they spend. So if you spend $100 in advertising then you hope to sell $200 worth of products or more. That’s a good ROI. It’s a return on investment. You’re investing $100 in your advertising and then you’re wanting to get a good return.

It’s just like if you are the stock market. If you buy a stock for $100 you hope that when you sell it you’ll sell it for more than that. So it’s the same exact idea with marketing, especially direct marketing. They really want to measure these things. They want to know how many people saw the ad, how much did they spend for the advertising and then how many people actually bought as a result and then they can compare those numbers. If they get less money then they spent that’s bad ROI. That’s a bad marketing campaign and they’ll probably stop it or change it.

So that’s the basic idea. It’s a basic marketing funnel so it will give you an idea of the kind of step-by-step process. Every company has its own marketing philosophy or approach. Some of them, especially the bigger ones, are more focused on creating an image, a brand. Other ones are much more focused on getting direct action immediately. They want to generate those sales right away. Every company is going to be different, but that’s the basic funnel, the basic process and idea for any general marketing campaign that you probably will see.

All right, good luck. By the way, one last note. You can use this same process yourself.

In the job search lessons we talked about, basically, a marketing campaign. What we did is we taught you a marketing campaign for yourself. It’s no different. First you identified, you researched your prospects, the companies you wanted to work for. Those were your prospects. Those were your targets, your target market.

Next what did you do, you created a campaign, a marketing campaign. In this case your resume, which is kind of like an advertisement for you and then a series of letters - a campaign. Then you sent them out to all these different companies that you targeted.

Now, of course, you got a certain response rate from that. You probably didn’t get 10 job offers. If you were targeting 10 companies, probably not all of them will offer you a job.

So you got a response rate. If one offered you a job then you got a 10% response rate.

Or, you could look at the response rate in terms of how many of them gave you an interview. That’s the next step in the funnel the first response interview. Then you talked more and you kind of gave your sales pitch during the interview and then you got another response rate, a certain number of them actually offered you a job. So it’s just another marketing funnel. It’s really no different you’re just doing this for yourself.

In fact, there’s a guy named Tom Peters who wrote a book called Brand You. He, basically, in the book teaches this same idea, that you have to think of yourself as if you’re your own product or you’re your own little company and just like big companies create brands and then market them with this kind of funnel system, you have to do exactly the same thing for your own career.

So you have to decide what are your values? What values do you want connected to your name. What are your special strengths? What’s your USP? What’s your unique selling proposition? In one sentence can you communicate what’s special and beneficial about you compared to everybody else who does your same job? That’s a good exercise to do. Try to think about that. Could you sum that up? You could try it for a while. Just write a few sentences about why you think you’re unique, why you’re special and then try to make it shorter and shorter and shorter so that it really gives a strong, clear, quick idea of why you’re special, what’s unique and special and great about you, your own personal USP. In this way you start building your brand so that when you create your resume you don’t do it randomly. You have this brand, this image in your mind, your unique strengths.

So on your resume you’re going to really focus on and really try to highlight and stress your special brand, your special strengths, what’s unique about you and then in your letter campaign same thing. In each of your short little letters, each letter is going to stress what’s unique about you, what’s strong about you, what’s special about you.

This is important. I think it’s a great idea because if you just try to please the person on the other side, you just tell them what you think they want to hear, well then you can get in a job that doesn’t fit you very well and you won’t be happy in it. So it’s much better that you’re more kind of aggressive and strong about who you are, why you’re special and what your strengths are and then in your research identify places, companies, bosses that will appreciate those strengths.

In the interview that’s a great place for your USP or your unique selling proposition. You can say it in lots of different ways, but you want to be constantly communicating what’s special about you. Why are you unique in a good way, in a special way, in a beneficial way? You can use accomplishments from the past to show this, to give examples, but you should be more organized and focused so you’re just not randomly talking about lots of great things but you actually have a consistent message. I’ll give you an example of this.

As a teacher my strengths are energy, motivating my students and getting great results for them, especially in the areas of listening and speaking. That was kind of my brand, my focus. So on my resume and in my interviews I didn’t talk about teaching writing, for example. I can teach writing, but it’s not what I love to do. It’s not what I’m really especially good at, so I didn’t talk about that. I didn’t stress that. I stressed my ability to be a great speaking and listening teacher.

In my letters, in my resume, in my accomplishments, in the interviews, I stressed and I showed and I talked about my energy, my motivation, my innovative teaching methods, all of these things. That’s what I stressed because that’s the kind of person I am. That was my brand. I didn’t talk about normal traditional things because I don’t teach in a normal traditional way. That’s not my brand and I don’t want people to hire me thinking I’m like that because I’m not.

Did some people not like my brand? Of course, everyone will not like your unique brand.

Everyone will not like you, but the people who do like you are going to love you if you’re really, really special, if you really focus on your strengths and make them stronger and stronger. Don’t be shy about them, be really strong and bold about them and market them. Just like a company would market its own unique product, its own unique brand, you can do that for yourself. You should do that for yourself and over time you can really develop your own special unique brand so that when coworkers and bosses and even people in other companies think of you they have a very strong idea.

When they thought of me they knew oh, that guy. He’s crazy. He’s energetic. He’s motivational. He has some really innovative different ways of teaching speaking and listening. That’s great. So if they needed someone like that or they wanted someone like that then they would call me or contact me. So it worked very well for me, it can work very well for you. Don’t try to be everything for everyone. No company does that in their marketing, they always try to be unique and different. That’s what you should do too and then you can create your own special brand and really build a powerful career.

Okay, so that’s it’s. That’s marketing from both a large corporate perspective and a smaller or medium size company perspective and then just your own personal career too. So get out there and market yourself.

The End.