(Part 2) Top products from r/marketing

Hey bud, it can be hard starting fresh on any new project (it's also my favorite thing in the world). I'll try my best to help you get the ball rolling!

Who is your target demographic?

This is the best place to start. Try to visualize your perfect customer. Seriously! Write out their exact age, gender, hair color, etc. Even give them a name (John, Jane?). Now, no matter what you do, that is the person you want to attract with your marketing strategies.

When you're planning a campaign, ask you yourself, "Would John/Jane go for this?"

It sounds dumb but trust me, it works.

What does John/Jane like to do?

It's important you know your target demo's likes/dislikes (for obvious reasons).

Let's say your target demo is Jane Doe, a 56 year old woman who has just started planning her retirement (a little late for that, I know). Let's pretend she's a secretary at a school and spend a lot of time on Facebook. Well, did you know the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is 55+ females? You could create a Facebook page for your financial institution and advertise it to only women above 55 years old that have listed interests such as "retirement planning" or "retirement". As for Facebook content, maybe you post finance tips a few times a day and soft-sell your services every one and a while.

Start planning!

Even though I don't know much about the business, I'll give you some of my ideas.

It's a finance institution so I'm guessing you're targeting 45+ to people about to retire. Mostly men, right?

For social, focus on Facebook and Twitter. Create a Facebook page, post 80% useful content (like the "tips" I talked about before) and 20% soft-sell your business. Start doing the same thing with Twitter (don't post the same stuff though). Use Twitter as a listening tool. There is an awesome "Advanced Search" tool that allows you to search for keywords and narrow it down by location. This is amazing for local businesses. You can type in "finance help" or "money help", narrow it down to users within whatever city, and instantly find people who are asking for your service.

Also, look into Facebook advertising like I mentioned before. Great way to hyper-target your demo.

Once you have a bit of an audience, start to think about Webinar's. They're a great way to provide tons of content to your audience, answer their questions, and provide a call to action at the end.

Start a blog. Focus on local keywords (i.e. "miami financial institution" instead of "financial institution"). If you don't know anything about SEO, here is a good starting point. Then watch this video.

RESOURCES

• SmartPassiveIncome.com
  
• Moz.com
  
• SocialMediaExaminer.com
  
• Likeable Social Media
  
• Anything by Seth Godin
  
• YouTube videos on how to use Google Analytics
  
  I threw a bunch of information at you so if you have any questions or need any more help, let me know! Feel free to DM me.

In theory any company can create a compelling and active Facebook page but honestly, there are just some things that are more interesting than others.

I happen to have an easy target market for FB: Women ages 25-50 in upper incomes who love fashion, family, and parenting.

If you had an an insurance company it would be a lot more difficult to find compelling shareable content that relates to insurance. So what you have to do is the "Jab, Jab, Right Hook" where you appeal to other things your target market is interested in and then for every 5 jabs (shareable content) you right hook them with a call to action in regards to your specific product.

For example, your non-profit could start to tug on heart strings by showing the people who are getting help by the grants. Tell stories about how your non-profit benefits others. Share other non-profit stories in your same genre. Post articles about the different areas your non-profit focuses on.

Facebook is like a great big cocktail party and you want to be the the most interesting and compelling person at the soiree.

Would love to add anyone on Goodreads if you use it too :) [Add me](https://www.goodreads.com/thedoerco
)

• Tested Advertising Method
  
• Ogilvy on Advertising
  
• How to Change Minds is a sales book, but it's got an easy to understand framework to understand how people make decisions that I have found useful for marketing
  
• The Ask Method Gives some great jumping off points on how to ask questions for marketing research, and how to organize that information to make decisions about your marketing and your product
  
• Positioning and Repositioning by the amazing marketing strategist Jack Trout of Disney and Coke, are good foundation reads if you don't know anything about marketing. If you know what a USP is, skip Positioning but I did like Repositioning. I did like Positioning as a refresher of a variety of different concepts that I have read more detailed individual books on.
  
• Integrated Marketing Communications to learn about more broadly how to make all of your marketing communications work together towards a common business goal. The book itself is about using marketing campaigns across different channels (tv, radio, print, online) in a coordinated effort, but it will help you understand how to use email, social, paid ads, and other marketing systems you develop together.
  
  Second Influence. Getting Everything You Can is good if you are basic in marketing, I would not recommend it for people who are more advanced.
  
  If you don't know what a "business goal" is, you need to read this:
  
  
• Scaling Up Every marketer should understand the processes that drive growth in businesses, because you are trying to manipulate those levers with marketing. You can also reverse engineer your prospect's business and explain the gains of your services in the terms of processes that drive their revenue when you're pitching them, too.

Hello hackpro,

Couple things I would initially suggest. Read these 2 books:

1.) The Blue Ocean Strategy: A "red ocean" is a market where a product or service is already manifested, aka saturated or even oversaturated. A "blue ocean" is walking into that market and changing the game. This book has a TON of great tips and mindset pointers when trying to do what you do. Here is the Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Expanded-Uncontested/dp/1625274491/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459345146&sr=8-1&keywords=blue+ocean+strategy

2.) Growth Hacker Marketing: This book is just plain awesome. I have read it 3 times. It goes through quite a few tactics to get your product/service visable and has some great case studies (dropbox, evernote etc.) showing how they made it with little to no marketing, but rather pushing their products via exclusivity and making smart calculated moves. Here is the amazon link for that:

http://www.amazon.com/Growth-Hacker-Marketing-Primer-Advertising/dp/1591847389/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459345183&sr=8-1&keywords=Growth+hacker+marketing

Post the above 2 books - I would really try to niche market your product. If you do not have a budget for paid search or media, I would focus on finding small to medium communities, join those communities and talk about your product, get sugggestions from community members, offer free beta tests (not sure what your product is, but you mentioned dropbox so I am assuming its software related) etc. Then, move up to larger communities/bloggers etc.

Content is king. Make TONS of content about your product (articles, video, etc.) and get it in cycle in your focus niche. I would focus on a message that sets you apart. You mentioned that the competition is mediocre, so in a creative "non bashing way" just highlight your strong points.

Just my initial $0.2 cents. If you have any deeper questions feel free to let me know.

-Rob

This is the newest edition of the book that my IMC course used when I was getting my degree. I don't think you'll be able to finish it in 30 days but the first couple of chapters will definitely give you a firm understanding of the basics.

It's obviously a textbook so it's expensive, but I'm certain you can find a pdf version floating around if you put your mind to it.

Sounds like you've gotten hooked up with a pretty good gig. Good luck!

The Idea Writers - Tons of Case Studies, but they're all told excellently.

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be - Inspiration not to settl and to do great work.

Baked In - A lot like an updated Purple Cow. All about integrating product, management, and marketing.

Blink or Tipping Point - About the little things that cause shifts in culture to happen.

Also, some Seth Godin action never hurts. Definitely recommend his blog.

If you want more "How to make ads" type stuff there are more down that path, too. Just let me know.

Epic content marketing might help you look at content from your blog to provide you with alternate methods of presenting it (infographics, videos, slide share presentations).

I liked the ideas found in Blue Ocean Strategy towards the beginning, but for whatever reason was never able to go past chapter 5.

Books and the blog of Seth Godin or alternatively Basecamp (formerly known as 37 signals) are usually fun, quick reads.

Blogs by KISSMetrics, Zendesk, Hubspot, and following Growth Hackers threads are all good options too.

What does your SaaS do?

Lastly, something that can provide guidance is taking an hour or two to draw your message map. Essentially, it's a list on one side of your target audience at each stage of purchase, what you want them to takeaway from your message and what are the main barriers to them understanding that message.

Best of luck!

Edits: Was on phone; added links for the lazy.

This isn't exactly what you're going for, but gives great insight to advertising. We read in it my account planning class. Loved it and it reads like a book. Very interesting. You can "take a peek inside" or buy here

Thanks for clarification re: Excel, you had me worried a bit! Moving forward, let's try to think of some things that may be on test...

Maybe they might provide you with a huge data table and ask you to do some things with it. It may/may not be in Excel. You might have to do an import.

Some things things to do with that data:

• Pivot Tables to analyze
• Random Sampling
• Advanced charting
• Data summarization forumlas
• Calculating confidence intervals
• etc.

I would Google around, try to find some books re: Excel + Market Research. Here is one:
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Marketing-Research-Excel-Edition/dp/0135078229/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_2

Good luck!

If you want books used in universities, for traditional marketing, i'd get any edition of Kotler's Principles of Marketing. Newer editions will have a bit of digital marketing in it. If you want a book on digital marketing, aimed at traditional marketers, i'd go for PR Smith's Emarketing Excellence. This second book would be easier if you've read the first though. If you want a book that's about the application of marketing to product development and commercialisation, i'd check out Marketing of high technology products and innovation, but again, this book would make more sense after the other two.


Some of these books are like 700 pages long, but don't be intimidated or whatever. What I found interesting about basic marketing is that we innately know a lot of it. Studying the material just allows you to formalise what you already know. So it's not like reading a 700 page book on economics or maths, you'd fly through it.


Pdfs of all of these books can be found with a little looking too, but I personally find it easier to have a physical book if i'm studying. Any college libraries will have these in their collection, and a lot of public libs too

It is absolutely crucial to marketing success to engage the emotions of your target audience. Tell to Win by Peter Gruber is an interesting read on this very subject.

SEMrush is definitely the most popular tool out there.

If you're looking for free "audit tools", you can also check out Hootsuite. It's free for one account and 3 social media profiles.

(Everything you need to know about building a startup: The Strawberry Startup)

It could work, provided you:

• have the right target: so people subscribed to /fantasy or similar
  
• have an irresistible offer: as mentioned in a previous post, I would offer a free copy for an email address. You can later target similar people (via Facebook Audience) or get them to buy the second book. It's all about building an audience.
  
  You just need to try ($20/w should be enough for a start).
  
  You should also read this book which precisely talk about your problem, and which I highly recommend!
  
  PS: also Iceland rocks! :)

The Thank You Economy is a pretty good book detailing the "why" behind social media being a necessary component for business.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Thank-Economy-Gary-Vaynerchuk/dp/0061914185

When wondering why people make certain decisions and planning your response game theory is key. This book is a great start to game theory. http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Strategically-Competitive-Business-Politics/dp/0393310353

Successful Direct Marketing Methods

Old school but IMO its the foundation of marketing and certainly digital marketing.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0071458298/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487100903&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=bob+stone+direct+marketing

I think storytelling is a strong technique. Nothing online supports such a technique.

How exactly does it work? The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language is like learning everything about internal combustion and nothing about the Indy 500.

There have been a bunch of articles touting storytelling. Dozens. One or two actually seemed to know what they were talking about and used storytelling technique. Given the goal, even that is not enough. Not every story furthers the marketing goal. Not just any story motivates a sale.

This type of question is way too late.

The Freakonomics podcast talks about things related to marketing frequently enough for me to suggest it here. Good episodes I can think of that are relevant: Are We in a Mattress-Store Bubble?, The White House Gets Into the Nudge Business (although as someone who has read the book Nudge, I don't think the episode is very good,) and various economics or behavioural science themed episodes.

http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Lies-Advertising-Account-Planning/dp/0471189626

a classic overview of account planning by one of the greats
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http://herd.typepad.com/files/bentleyearlsadmap.pdf

a paper that takes a slightly different approach from 'tipping point'

Crossing the Chasm