Defining The Buzzwords You Buy
Marketing is full of shiny objects. Let’s talk about a few.
The marketing lexicon is full of buzzwords it created to make its practitioners sound really smart. Let’s dispel that myth right now. When you buy marketing services whether they are social media or traditional, you are really paying for someone to pay attention for you.
That’s ok. That’s how you scale. Finding smart people to help your business grow is the way to win.
Here are a few phrases to know before you hire that marketing guru/me.
Growth Hacking
This is a fancy term for someone who uses an analytics tool the right way. They look at data collected by a social media aggregation tool like HubSpot, Google Analytics, or eClincher and do some A/B testing.
The bring the results of these small sample A/B tests to you in the form of demographic and activity insights that usually work. Don’t kid yourself. These are valuable people. Some are just pretentious jerks who look smarter because they pay attention really well.
Some people believe they are so good at this they anoint themselves growth hacking ninjas. UGH!
Retargeting/Remarketing
Your efforts on social media draw people to your site. They look around but don’t actually buy anything. A good marketing pro knows how to capture the IP address of the website visitor and use a few tools to send them follow up emails or carefully placed ads. That’s retargeting.
See also Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA). More made up words for following up with people.
Think of this as being in Best Buy and having a nice young man in a blue shirt ask if you need help when you are just wishing you could buy that new laptop.
“No thanks. Just looking right now.”
Growth Marketing
Finding customers is hard enough. Keeping good ones that consistently return to you are vital to business survival. Growth marketing is a series of ideas that attempt to maximize the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer.
So basically, you are attaching a complicated term to the idea of following up with your best customers to see if you can provide better value and continue the relationship.
Maybe you adjust a product offering for your two biggest accounts. That’s smart business. Before it was Growth Marketing, it was called Customer Service.
Influencer Marketing
The internet has created an awareness of smart people. It also created the hordes of followers who hang on the very words of their appointed guru. This is an opportunity to connect with built in authority and develop a market.
This used to be called celebrity endorsements, but it changed because we need to attached new words to old ideas. It makes them sound current and worthy of consideration.
Viral Marketing
Getting people to talk about and share their experiences with your business is the best form of advertisement possible. That’s really all viral marketing is: Encouraging people to talk about and share your stuff.
I know. This is getting stupid. Right?
The Point of All This
The goal here isn’t to turn you away from marketing. Being on social media and developing your story and voice are the best ways to cultivate your business.
I’m here to be as realistic as possible and set the bar of expectations. When I came up with the concept of SafeStrategies, I knew the only real way to win in the online marketing world was to embrace the long game. Love the process and grind.
That’s what I believe. Follow me on Twitter for great content thoughts. Follow me on Facebook for weekly Facebook Live casts. I’m on Instagram each day, too.
