GUIDE

Building a brand and strategy is a critical process for a company to be successful. Insight is a key factor in this process because the right insights can help a brand connect more effectively with its target audience. Insights means understanding customers’ needs, expectations, preferences, and behaviors. This information is key to determining a brand’s unique value proposition and establishing a deeper connection with its audience. Insights can also help in performing competitive analysis and understanding industry trends. When a brand is equipped with the right insights, it can better evaluate market opportunities and develop a more effective strategy.

Culture includes many things that are difficult to measure. But it allows us to understand things that seem quite complex. To do this, it is necessary to correctly define the cultural context and the changes in the culture over time. Communicators learn about culture by looking at the latest trends and focusing on deep and enduring values that change over time. This information gives them the consumer context, the brand’s growth map, and the benefits and opportunities.

Effective marketing communication to customers in different markets and regions is possible by knowing that culture. Information about culture makes it possible for brand messages to be more engaging. Detection of the change in consumer behavior ensures that the decisions to be made in the fields of products, services, and communication are more successful. For example, in a communication study to be conducted in England, it is necessary to focus on the product or service’s benefits and how these benefits make life easier. It is necessary to highlight the facts proving the benefits of the messages to be given in Germany. These cultural differences also affect the communication studies to be built on the customer journey. Increasing conversion rates, especially in online sales, is possible with the correct perception of such differences.

Marketing is one of the key elements that determine the success of a business in today’s business world. A correct marketing strategy not only ensures that the product or service reaches the consumer, but also contributes to strengthening a brand, gaining competitive advantage, and creating customer loyalty. However, it is crucial for businesses to understand and be aware of the specific dynamics related to their industries and types when formulating these strategies. Marketing works differently in every industry, customer needs and expectations are different and therefore businesses need to understand the characteristics of the industry in which they operate.

Regarding marketing, the risks of not knowing the business types are significant. First, a business’s failure to accurately determine its target audience can result in wasted marketing efforts. Each industry has different priorities and value propositions, so a business cannot create an effective marketing strategy without understanding the customer profile in the industry it operates. Secondly, in today’s world where competition is intense, it is vital for businesses to follow current trends and innovations in their sectors and to offer valuable and competitive products or services to customers. Finally, businesses’ ignorance of the legal regulations and standards in the sectors in which they operate may lead to legal problems and loss of reputation.

Consumer Products and Retail: Includes businesses that produce and sell products directly to consumers. It includes various products such as food, clothing, and electronics. Retail collaborations, POP, and customer loyalty programs are implemented as brand communication strategies. Sample Company: Nike

B2B: B2B businesses provide products or services to other businesses. For example, a software company may offer software solutions to another company. In terms of marketing, customized campaigns, collaboration efforts, industry events, and content marketing can be applied. Sample Company: IBM

Service Sector: Businesses in this sector provide a service rather than physical products. For example, consulting firms, cleaning services, etc. In terms of marketing, customer references and content types that explain the concrete advantages of the service should be prepared. Sample Company: Accenture

E-Commerce Sector: Businesses that sell products or services over the Internet. Large platforms such as Amazon and Alibaba are also included in this category. Marketing strategies should focus on digital advertisements, social media campaigns, and search engine optimizations. Example Company: Amazon

Technology and Software: Companies that develop and sell technology products or software solutions. As a communication strategy, emphasis should be placed on innovation, product features, advertising targeting for specific sectors, and educational content. Sample Company: Apple

Health and Medicine: Businesses in the health and pharmaceutical sector carry out studies on health services, pharmaceutical production, or health technologies. Educational content, marketing for healthcare professionals, informative campaigns, and communication strategies to build trust should be prepared. Sample Company: Johnson & Johnson

Financial Services: Companies that provide banking, insurance, investment, and other financial services. It is necessary to focus on communication activities aimed at building trust and innovation. Sample Company: JPMorgan Chase & Co

Accommodation and Tourism: Include businesses such as hotels, travel agencies, and tourism destinations. Customer reviews, experience emphasis, and destination marketing should be emphasized. Sample Company: Marriott International

Manufacturing and Industry: Includes companies that produce physical products, for example, companies that produce automotive, electronics, or construction materials. Content that emphasizes supply chain communication, participation in industry fairs, and product quality should be prepared. Sample Company: Toyota

Non-Profit and Public Sector: Includes organizations with social, environmental or public service purposes. Public awareness studies should be carried out. Sample Company: UNICEF

Educational Institutions: Refers to schools, colleges, universities, and other educational institutions. Studies are carried out to build reputation and promote training programs. Sample Company: Harvard University

Real Estate: Includes companies engaged in the purchase, sale, or rental of real estate. It is necessary to emphasize virtual tours and local community interaction. Example Company: Zillow

The way a customer purchases a product or service is called the customer journey. A product is first noticed. It is considered and evaluated in detail. And a certain way is passed to realize the purchasing process. Knowing this journey for marketers gives an idea of ​​which paths customers go through and decide to buy the product. Marketers who can empathize with the customer try to give their communication messages in this direction. In addition, brand strategists make plans about how to position the brand by focusing on the customer journey.

The customer journey consists of 3 main stages awareness stage, evaluation stage, and decision stage. The awareness stage is the stage of understanding that the customer needs a product or service. The customer detects a problem at this stage. To fix this problem, it starts scanning information sources. The evaluation phase is the phase where the evaluation is done on the options. The problem is obvious. The aim is to go over the problem and scan all resources to resolve it. The decision stage is the stage where the purchasing behavior is completed by focusing on the right product. The solution has now been decided. The aim is to eliminate the problem felt by purchasing the right product.

Understanding what the customer thinks in all marketing communications ensures that the content is created with the right strategies. Not fully understanding this journey leads to a disconnection between customers and businesses. When ideas about the journey begin to form, it becomes clearer at what stage what type of content will be written for customers.

Awareness stage; It is the part where customers look for answers, do research, apply for training, and gain insights about the product or service that will solve their problems. Blog posts, social media posts, and e-trainings help customers at this point. Blogs, search engine marketing, and social media marketing are suitable marketing channels for customers who are in the awareness stage. (Blog Posts, Social Media Posts, Checklists, How-To Videos, Tools, E-Books, Educational Webinars)

Evaluation Phase; The awareness phase is complete when customers begin to get specific ideas for products that will fix their problems. At the stage of finding the best solution, the products are evaluated according to certain criteria. At this point, communication of trust is required. Websites, blog posts, search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and social media channels are ideal platforms for the evaluation phase. (Product Comparison Guides, Case Study, Free Sample)

Each brand maintains its presence in a particular market. Brands trying to gain maximum share in the market determine at what points they need to improve themselves with the competitor analysis they apply. Thus, marketing strategies are determined based on research and analysis. A comprehensive analysis can reveal which strategies are used to drive traffic or adverts by competitors. The tactics of the competitors can be developed better or the brand strategy can be positioned in these areas by taking advantage of the gaps. Opportunities that were not used before are revealed as a result of competitor analysis.

Various tools have been developed to make platform-based analyses directly in studies on digital marketing. Today, many platforms have developed their competitor and brand analysis tools, from paid advertising models such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google Ads to free marketing models such as SEO. Semrush, Ahrefs, SimilarWeb, and Facebook Ads library are the best analytics programs in the market that present who the real competitors are, what strategies might be implemented, or what newer ideas on trends might be.

Brands that want to do social media marketing can enter the social media of competing brands that are open to everyone and see what work is done in this area. In addition, active campaigns of competitors can be observed by using keywords through the Facebook Ads Library. Keyword Planner, developed by Google, gives the volume and average cost of clicks of keywords created by competitors in the selected region. In this way, you can discover how often keywords are searched and advertising costs can be predicted. Ahrefs is useful for crawling which keywords are being bid on and the best-performing landing pages. Advertising strategies and budgets can be viewed using the competitor’s URL in Semrush’s Ad Research tab, which analyzes integrated search competitors. Ad copy, live ads, and the most profitable PPC keywords can be tracked and ad spend tracked.

Marketing communication has become a technology-based business today. Alternative communication channels and tools are increasing day by day. The marketing communication process, which started with newspapers and magazines, is integrated with all the technologies we use today. The marketing industry has to exist in every field where technology exists. As such, marketing began to take on a completely different form with new ideas, strategies, practices, and concepts. Communication is no longer limited to only theoretical and application areas but also covers technological and technical issues.

The existence of social media has created a change that is hard to see in the field of communication. It also created limitless opportunities for marketing communicators. Today, many brands carry out their campaigns and corporate communications through their social media. In addition, with the paid advertising models of social media channels, it has become possible to send communication messages to a much larger audience. The increasing use of social media with mobile technology has made it necessary for brands to invest in mobile. Today, most ad impressions take place on mobile phones.

Google machine learning has played an important role in the growth of businesses by optimizing their marketing activities thanks to its advanced technology. It was also shared that about a third of 3.5 million searches on Google are voice searches. Just like Siri technology, voice searches are expected to drive marketing communications in the future. With the availability of this technology, marketers will need to strategize on colloquial expressions rather than keywords in the future.

Chatbot technology, which includes automatic text, voice, and messaging to chat with customers, has become very common use today. Global Chatbot marketing reaches $1.2 Billion and is growing by 24%. Also, 45% of customers choose to use Chatbots to communicate with businesses. The importance of this technology is increasing day by day due to the rapid resolution of the problems from the customers, the transformation of the data obtained in this process into useful information, and the opportunity for feedback and analysis.

With the development of video technology, marketing communications have changed from text and visual-based communication to a new form that can be consumed quickly. Video content, which can send maximum messages in the shortest time, has become an indispensable part of marketing communication with the increase in mobile usage.