angel zuniga martinez Here are five commonly asked marketing questions we’ve received over the years and our quick insights on these very important topics. Use and share this page as a resource in support of marketing and storytelling education to advance your organization’s mission and goals.
1. What Is Marketing?
Marketing is the process of influencing the behavior of one or several people so they will make a purchase, cast a vote, offer a contribution, or join an organization.
Put the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time.
This statement talks to the 4 P’s of Marketing as introduced in 1960 by marketer E. Jerome McCarthy:
- Product
- Place
- Price
- Promotion
In recent years, many marketers have adjusted Jerome’s insights to add two more P’s:
- People
- Process
2. What is Call to Action and FAB?
All good marketing contains a “call to action”. In sales, it is commonly called the A.B.C. which stands for “Always Be Closing,” however, PR Story Studios works with an adjusted take on this tradition. We call it T.B.C., which stands for “Timely Be Closing”.
This means it takes time to get to know a potential customer and what they may need and whether your product or service is a good “fit” for them. You should not ask for their business until it’s the right time. When is it the right time? Keep on reading!
FAB
The focus on successful “selling” is found in F.A.B. (Features Advantages Benefits) and needs based selling on the end “benefit” of your offering. There are only 5 benefits to sell almost any product or service:
- Make Money
- Save Time
- Save Money
- Increase Health or Wellness
- Provide Peace of Mind
Some activities that fall under marketing include advertising, public relations, and market research. Any successful organization’s key marketing objectives should include a focus on good content marketing:
3. What is Content Marketing, Storytelling, and Trust got to do with it?
CONTENT
Functioning as the cornerstone of any successful marketing plan, good content marketing creates and shares valuable stories commonly thru searchable online articles, videos, photos, graphics, and sound recordings published on owned media platforms, like an organization’s website and newsletters, in order to attract and keep customers. It should also be sensibly transparent and honest about the supported brand and always include a good marketing call to action.
You can maximize good content marketing on owned media by pushing out the best stories via social media platforms. The key is to increase “eye balls” to view your stories on the platforms you control.
Although it has been said that “Content is King,” the goal moving forward is that “Access to Content is King!”
“I have a love hate relationship with all social media…it’s a tool we have and must use because that’s where the fish swim, but the complete truth of our narrative story MUST be in every individual and organization’s FULL control,” said Angel Zuniga Martinez, creative.
The four most common owned media platforms an individual or organization controls are their own created and managed websites, mobile applications, newsletters, and internal publications like magazines and annual reports.
“The goals of Content Marketing are to: Build relationships with existing clients, attract new customers, demonstrate benefits, tell interesting stories about your brand and to appear in search engines and increase web traffic.”~ Robert Wynne, “Content Marketing – The Real Story,” Forbes Magazine, 7/8/13
STORYTELLING
Any good organization’s marketing programs are designed to increase awareness about their product and services, while building trust. To understand the philosophy behind these marketing efforts, it is important to understand how they impact the organization’s target audiences and the product-adoption process—the psychological steps consumers, or target audiences, go through from the time they learn about a product or service to the time they actually buy.
George Lucas, the builder and dreamer of one of the most commercially and culturally successful stories in the world – STAR WARS, used many of the storytelling insights laid out by the research and work of Professor Joseph Campbell. Many successful marketers and storytellers have utilized the same path called The Hero’s Journey or the monomyth.
“It is, essentially, a path of maturation that all evolving humans follow. “It’s a fundamental experience that everyone has to undergo,” said Campbell.
TRUST
Moving a target audience along the product-adoption continuum requires extensive, focused marketing efforts. An organization’s marketing efforts create awareness and interest, but the local sales person must complete the sale by convincing that potential client to trust them.
Remember the “right time” to ask for the business?
From a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest level of trust, the “right time” to ask for a person to buy your product or service is when you have verified:
- they have a need or pain point that they TRUST (at a 4 or 5 level) your product or service to fill or solve.
- they TRUST (at a 4 or 5 level) your organization to support their product or service.
- they TRUST (at a 4 or 5 level) you as a saleperson.
4. What Is Public Relations?
Public relations (PR) is communicating with various sectors of the public to influence their attitudes and opinions in the interest of promoting a person, product, organization, or idea. PR, by itself, does not “sell” anything.
PR works in partnership with marketing and communications to accomplish the mission and goals of an organization.
5. What Is the Difference Between Marketing and Public Relations?
- Public relations is one element of marketing.
- Public relations is primarily a communications tool, whereas marketing also includes needs assessment, program development, promotion, and sales.
- Public relations is a two way open communications tool, whereas marketing is mostly one direction.
- Public relations seeks to influence attitudes, whereas marketing tries to influence specific behaviors, such as purchasing, joining, voting, etc.
- Public relations does not define the goals of the organization, whereas marketing is involved in defining aspects like mission, strategy, potential members, and services.
For more information on how the PR Story Studios team can help your organization, reach out today by email at story@prstorystudios.com.
