Marketing Terminology - Explained

Don’t be baffled by marketing jargon!

Last week I was taking a potential client through a proposal and I realised, that despite my best efforts there was lots of marketing terminology in proposal that you would only really understand if you had a lot of experience in marketing, or had been through a brand and marketing process before.

When I started Marketing With Passion, I knew I wanted to make it so that a non-marketer could work with us to achieve their goals, and not feel like they were being taken on a journey they didn’t understand – I couldn’t believe I’d snuck back into old habits!

Sadly, there are times when marketing terminology does need to be used to explain concepts or activity; often because to explain it in another way takes three times the time! With that in mind, I thought it would be best to provide some explanations and background on terms, so that everyone is on an equal playing field.

Branding and Brand

It is a common misunderstanding to assume that your brand is your logo, your colours, the imagery you use. These are visual elements which support your brand; Your brand is an accumulation of these and much more.  

A brand is how people interact with you service, product or organisation. It is both tangible, and intangible. Its what people say about you whilst you’re not in the room. It’s the reason we would buy TVs, Watches, Music devices and phones from Apple, but you wouldn’t buy a watch from Dell! It’s a tool which drives commercial results.

Branding defines the way you work, and what you stand for, it helps explain whether or not you should do something, partner with someone, and gives your business a reason for existing beyond making money.

Knowing your brand and being happy with it should be the start of any marketing and communication journey.

Visual identity

This is a component of the visual execution of your brand – its all of the things that a consumer can ‘see’ in relation to your company. Your logo, your colour scheme, your sales material, your tone of voice. Don’t make the mistake of spending days debating your logo, and not giving enough time and energy to other visual executions of your brand.

Take a look at the below, do any of the images contain a logo? No. And yet, you know the brand?

O2 mobile water bubbles.

For Image Source: click here

Coca-Cola Swoosh.

For Image Source: click here

Your visual identity, might include your products, the shape of your packaging, the images on your website, your social media and much more. Its what brings together your brand to look cohesive, and always ‘you’.

Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy is a plan which supports a businesses overall business goals. Perhaps you want to grow your business ready for a sale, increase your staff retention, expand abroad, diversify your product offering? Whatever it is, your marketing strategy should always support these goals.

It’s a plan, a top line approach to supporting business growth. Typically it will include:

• Identifying your target customers

• Analysing the market (Macro and Micro)

• Analysing the competition

• Identifying the right marketing channels (PR, advertising, social media etc.)

• Determining your position in the market (what makes you different, and attractive vs your competitors)

• Your marketing budget (what your going to spend on your marketing)

• An execution plan

• A marketing communication plan/ An execution plan

A Marketing Communication Plan

Whereas a strategy is long term (at least 12 months, if not longer depending on the goals of the business). A marketing communication plan is likely to be just 12 months long. Whilst still aligning to the businesses’ goals, unlike a marketing strategy, a coms plan is the ‘how’ – ‘how’ to deliver the growth needed. For example; what will our PR stunt or calendar look like. How will we breakdown the spend on our media (for example will we have an ‘always-on approach’ (where there is a constant spend on media across the year), or a spikes approach (where we may want to only communicate at key periods of the year).

And as a plan, it is just that, a plan, should something major happen (COVID-19 anyone?) the plan will need to change and adapt, they are iterative.

Content marketing

You may hear marketers say “Content is king!” but not really know why they are saying it? Well, content is a way of marketing to an audience without overtly ‘selling to them’.

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as:

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.

Put simply, its about pitching your products or services in a way where they are enriching the life of your consumer. It can be anything: emails, social media, explanation cards, videos, info-graphics, memes etc. A piece of content that is useful, makes them laugh, informs them, or makes them think.

Ever wonder why the Lush Times existed – a newspaper given to you when you buy your soap? Or why Waitrose has its own newspaper? Or why airlines such as easy jet have their own magazines? Content! They are portraying their brand in a way which doesn’t sell to you. Without you even realising, you’re consuming their brand, and engaging with it in a potentially deep and meaningful way, not in a way where the brand is screaming at you BUY BUY BUY (that’s advertising!).

Target Market

This is the group of people (or companies) who you are aiming your product or service at. If your thinking “my product can be used by everyone” think again. This is not a defined target market. Your target market is someone you should be able to describe, name, know what they read, consume, how much they earn, whereabouts they live etc. Some marketers may call them pen portraits, some will call them avatars; essentially it’s the same thing, its about knowing who your end and target consumer is. Defining it down to one person who you’ve named is just one way to understand your target market.  

Unless you have a marketing budget to rival Coca-cola and McDonalds, you cannot target everyone. A target market allows you to make your marketing budget work harder, as well as tailoring the message you want to use to that group.

There are many more pieces of marketing jargon out there, so if your being baffled by marketing terms, get in touch? We’re always happy to help!