Origins of Marketing Terms (Infographic)

In the last few years, history has been made. Words like selfie, selfie stick, twerk, derp and bae have all been added to the dictionary. It’s not surprising to hear something new everyday. Despite the ever-evolving lingo, there are a few marketing terms that seem to not be going anywhere anytime soon.

Have you ever stopped and wondered where some of these common words come from? No need to brush up on your marketing etymology to find out–we’ve decoded 6 frequently used marketing terms for you ourselves.Continue reading

7 Proven Steps to Defining Your Target Audience

Jemully Media free target audience checklist

Download Our Free Target Audience Checklist.

It starts with the right questions. It ends with the right answers.

Here is an example of how the scenario goes in our agency. The table was set with the usual fare: fruit, cheeses, and a touch of something sweet (usually a muffin or two). Along with small porcelain plates, the notepads and pens were positioned by each place. The flat screen was displaying the company website. When we finished the get-acquainted pleasantries between our team and our new client, I directed the conversation to the purpose of the gathering—learning about his target audience.

“Thank you for sharing a little bit about yourself and the background of your company. So, as we begin to formulate a marketing strategy, help us understand exactly who is your target market—your ideal customer—for the business?”

“Everyone,” he replied with a little chuckle as he glanced at each person around the table, looking for signs of affirmation. “Everyone needs what we sell.”

Every week our team sits down with business owners who participate in a similar scenario. It is our team’s goal to learn about each company so we can help the owner develop a strategy for growth. The answer to the common question, “Who is your exact target audience?” is one of the first questions a business owner should answer. The description in this answer impacts the effectiveness of whatever game plan is implemented. Not only will the answer be a guiding factor in the channels the business uses for the promotions, but it will also influence the content of the message that is going to be communicated.

When the first answer to the audience question is big, and wide, and inclusive, it is our job to ask more questions that will begin to draw smaller and smaller circles on the target. The final result of the questions and answers will be a central sphere that encompasses just the right persons for the product.

Defining the target audience for your business.

If your answer to the question is similar to the one we often get—”everybody!”—then our free seven-step checklist is for you. This checklist is our series of questions we use with clients. You can take this tool and answer the questions as they apply to your business. This set of questions helps you sift through the whole world and shake out which type of potential customer will benefit most from what you offer. After answering the questions, you will have a clearer picture of who the ideal customer is for your business. Knowing your ideal customer will help you focus your marketing efforts so they are tailored to reach the right segment of “everybody” who needs your product.

OUTLINING THE TARGET AUDIENCE PROCESS

In our free Target Market Checklist, you will work through a simple process of answering questions about your business that will help you:

  1. Define your brand and your niche.
  2. Define your unique value proposition.
  3. Describe your ideal customer.
  4. Describe what your ideal customer needs most.
  5. Craft your brand promise.
  6. Choose your marketing channels.
  7. Define your goals and measures.

We appreciate your interest in our Target Market guide! With this checklist in hand, you are well on your way to hammering out an effective marketing plan. Sometimes, knowing the right questions to ask is just as important as having all the answers.

DOWNLOAD THE CHECKLIST

To get your free downloadable PDF version of this content, simply fill out the form below. This form will also subscribe you to our newsletter where you will get access to other useful marketing tips. Don’t worry, we won’t overload your inbox, just our newsletter a few times a year with more helpful tips and links to some of our popular blog posts!

More resources for refining your target.

After you you answer the questions on our checklist, you may want to refine your audience even more. Additionally, we recommend some competitor research as well. Here are some resources that will help you take a deeper dive in your strategic planning.

Unless You Have A Website, You’re Not in Business

The importance of having a company website - or you're not in business!

Do you remember life before cellular phones? How did we ever do anything? We live in a time when technology makes life easier (and sometimes more complex) to the point that doing most things without the aid of technology seems preposterous. While mobile phones have warped everyday life over the past few decades, business websites have revolutionized our approaches to business models, advertising, and reaching our target market.

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6 Reasons Your Menu Should be on Facebook

 

If menus weren’t available online, I think my husband and I actually might have starved by now. Each night around 6:00 without fail, my husband and I inevitably ask the same question:

So, what’s for supper?

We can’t seem to agree on a place and eventually, one of us gets hangry.

Thankfully, since Facebook implemented its Menu tabs, which allows restaurants to directly display their menu on Facebook business pages, we can resolve our dinner dilemmas more quickly. We can easily scan restaurant menus to find dishes that sound good to both of us.

The addition of menu tabs on Facebook isn’t just better for my evenings, it provides businesses a wider audience engagement that results in some serious ROI.

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Brand Identity: “Be Like the Cool Kids”

Yeah, they’re invincible, and she’s just in the background.
And she says,
“I wish that I could be like the cool kids,
‘Cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in.
I wish that I could be like the cool kids, like the cool kids.

—Cool Kids by Echosmith

If you’ve listened to a pop radio station in the last year you’ve heard Cool Kids by Echosmith. The simple and repetitive lyrics express the familiar teenage feelings of not fitting in to the cool crowd.

It’s also illustrative of dynamics in the marketing world. The marketing cool kids are doing something right, and thousands of marketers are wandering around the internet trying to nail down what it is.

Brand identity. It’s how who you are affects how you do what you do. Got it?

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Consequences for Ignoring Mobile Web Design

Mobile Web Design

We knew it would come–the time when mobile web design would take over. At the beginning of the year we predicted mobile 1st to be a top 2015 website design trend, and with recent changes by Google, it is surpassing trend status and quickly becoming a necessity. If your business already has a mobile web design, you may be ahead of the competition and your search engine ranking may have just improved a smidge. If not, your google ranking probably just took a hit.

Here’s why you need a mobile web design, the consequences for not being mobile-friendly, and how to verify if you are.

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Business Blogs: 12 Major Benefits (& Blunders)

Business blog feature image

Business blogs are gaining attention for being the invaluable marketing tool that industry leaders have believed them to be for some time now. One of the first questions business leaders ask regarding a blog is, “What’s the ROI?” Valid question. With enough successful business blogs paving the way, there is growing research to answer it with impressive percentages.

The biggest benefit — the one pretty much all the other benefits point to — is driving traffic to your website. Blogging offers more long-term bang for your buck than any other traffic-increasing method (like paying for Google ads).

Let us show you what we mean. Here’s a breakdown of the benefits a business blog provides its company, along with some backing statistics and tips for best practices.

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3 Psychological Principles for Social Media Marketing

psychological principles in social media
By looking at some basic psychological principles, we form insight into how to make social media work for marketing.

The German philosophers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka founded Gestalt psychology, which argues that human behavior can’t be truly understood by only looking at a few components of behavior. Instead, one must look at the whole individual. This line of thinking created a series of laws that illustrate the way people perceive the world. What these laws conclude is that humanity generally views the world as meaningful and complete, not as series of individual parts.

The Gestalt principles, which break down human perception into 8 laws of receptivity, are called the Laws of Perceptual Organization. The 3 psychological principles that apply best to marketing in social media will help businesses connect with their audiences in a more direct and meaningful way.

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Social Media Growth: Get Connected

social media growth Jemully Media

Social media growth is a hot topic among marketers, no doubt. Business owners from all kinds and sizes of companies are asking the question, how do we do it? Gurus are filling up the blogosphere with how-to’s and tips for social media growth. And now the ability to measure ROI for online marketing is growing, which simply makes it easier to validate.

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