What is Marketing and Why is it Important?
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A brief high level exploration of what marketing is, what marketers do, and why it is an essential business function.
I previously explored Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and what it really means. As an extension of this, I feel it would be beneficial to explore the marketing function as a whole, what it does, and why it is needed. The purpose of this article is to provide some context to help inform discussions around marketing generally and marketing the Hive and PeakD platforms.
Generally when we think about marketing as individuals we think about print media, digital ads, catchy jingles, tv spots, social media and web footprint. In this way of thinking, we have it backwards. These are simply the tools that the marketing function of any organization has at it's disposal. The marketing function has one job, generate revenue. By combining the tools above with analytics, quality content generation, and business know-how, the marketing team strives to generate leads, drive conversions and make money as the face of a business.
B2C - Business to Consumer
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The act of marketing to consumers in order to generate leads that become:
- A consumer userbase
- Sales
B2C marketing is about marketing to regular everyday people in order to sell a service, literally or figuratively.
B2B - Business to Business
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The act of marketing a product or service to another business, also known as enterprise services. B2B is very different from marketing to regular everyday people.
The difference between B2B and B2C is in the product or service. When you begin a marketing initiative deciding what the target is, is a critical first step.
Demographics
Once you have decided who you are marketing to, businesses or consumers, you must then perform some demographic research. To some degree this will be derived subjectively, through conjecture, but over time, when your marketing initiatives are live, you would use data to be more precise in your assessment, explore new demographics, and expand your activities to reach them.
An example of a demographic is the desirable millennial demographic in the crypto space. You would outline their age range, gender makeup, geography, class and employment status, education and more in order to ensure that you are properly targeting them in marketing activities. This is effectively demographic profiling used to create target audiences. Given the subject matter of crypto, we might also assume that these individuals are technically inclined, have some wealth, could be disenfranchised, and are motivated by profit.
What to do with Your Target Audience
We have now identified an example target audience, aged 24-39, in the case of crypto, predominantly male, it is a global population and they have some unique characteristics.
In general we now have to consider 2 types of advertising, organic and paid. Organic marketing includes social media, SEO and SERP, co-marketing, email and the like. Paid includes SEM, digital and print advertising (though print is going away), Giveaways and more. There can be a crossover between methods depending on the actual nature of an activity.
A combination of the two activities is essential, organic marketing leads to brand awareness, legitimacy and in some cases, free leads and conversions. Paid advertising is incredibly data driven, costs money, but can lead to incredible results.
No matter how you are marketing, efforts should be tailored to the target audience.
What do Marketers do?
In order to realize marketing goals, someone has to do the legwork, these folks can be thought of as marketers. In general there are several facets to marketing, however the best will understand a little bit about each function as it relates to the whole. There are SEO experts, social media experts, digital advertisers, content creators (writing and graphics, planners, and data analysts. Usually someone would have a combination of some of these skills.
What does this have to do with PeakD and Hive
Some of you are probably wondering what does this have to do with PeakD and Hive. That's entirely up to the user base, the supporters, and the development teams. Considering that Hive and PeakD are decentralized, the goal isn't revenue per se, but it is user adoption. It can be very difficult to merge conventional marketing with a decentralized platform, but it is important if indeed the goal is realize mass adoption of the platform and user growth.
I hope this helps clarify marketing at a high level and is able to provide foundational value in deciding how to market the platform(s).
Best,
Do Wut
*Chances are some 'marketers' on the platform will get mad at me as I have started divulging some 'trade secrets' lol 😘. *
I agree with most of the assessments here except this "predominantly male". In fact once you delve into the active communities here on Hive, there are lots of women here, and in fact, a lot of the sharing and communication that takes place on Hive is comprised of both genders. I would say that attracting more women to Hive is actually a huge opportunity for massive growth.
I also addressed this my most recent post:
Marketing is useless unless you know exactly who you want to reach. I've been thinking a lot about the kinds of people that Hive attracts, and I think the thing we all have in common is this:
We all want control over our own data, and we don't like censorship.
There are a ton of people right now who are being demonetized, censored and silenced. Even entire communities, like rowdy youths, Natural Medicine groups and intellectuals are being silenced. The graphics and art I've created so far is targeting people who are pissed off at the current state of the internet. That group is growing huge. The thing all our future Hivers have in common is this, and it affects all people who are being censored and who don't have a voice.
On the point about gender, it was merely an example and I was referring to the crypto space as a whole, per data from Canada's CBC news. While it is from 2018, I don't think the gender gap would have closed significantly. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bitcoin-s-gender-divide-could-be-a-bad-sign-experts-say-1.4458884
It may well be that Hive has a more even gender demographic makeup, which is great and I believe further reinforces the point of demographic research, data collection.
Now with data collection and control, this is where it's interesting for marketers. Often times the data being collected is anonymized, you can go as far as collect data such as age and gender, but this must be disclosed in a terms of service and privacy policy. As people become more and more aware of how data is being used, it would be reasonable to see a shift in collection, quantitative and qualitative value, and then a shift in how marketing is done.
I don't believe people are on Hive for just censorship resistance. They are on here to find community and to earn crypto. These three things are the most prominent unique value propositions of this platform.
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