William Mougayar's Blog
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To gain some perspective and see the forest from the trees, I made up this diagram to depict the “whole marketing system”, and start from the top down gradually, so you can appreciate the hierarchy of cascading effects from one stage to another, and the objectives inside each phase. Sometimes the path from Exposure to Advocacy takes 2 minutes, and sometimes it takes weeks or months. It depends on your product and the type of market you’re in. And there’s an interesting closed-loop effect that happens. As your customers become advocates, they will in turn give you free awareness, so your marketing becomes self-perpetuating. As an example, every time you display your Twitter handle at the bottom of your email, or in your marketing material, you are also giving Twitter free advertising.
Everything in marketing is usually part of something else.
There are things that replace others, but it’s always within the context of what marketing does. So, every time you hear of something new in marketing, whether it’s a tool, a tactic or a new buzz word, first attempt to slot it where it fits in the Whole Marketing Hierarchy, because it will typically fit somewhere in the Awareness --> Demand --> Experience --> Support continuum.
If you live in the startup world, two marketing topics may have recently overtaken your mind share: Growth Hacking and Inbound Marketing. They are important, but don’t let them overtake your share of marketing activity.
You can certainly hack your growth (and you should), but don’t hack your marketing.
More customers are online, therefore we can do more online with them, but digital marketing doesn’t live in a vacuum. It’s a child of marketing. And why are we giving technical reference terms to marketing, like “full-stack” marketing and growth “hacking”? Marketing is not a stack. So, let’s not talk about full-stack marketing. Marketing doesn’t get hacked. So, let’s confine growth hacking to what it is: an activity of marketing to drive demand. Let’s step back now to see the forest from the trees. AWARENESS You need to drive Awareness for your product, by increasing its exposure, making it easily discoverable, and establishing a positive image in the minds of your prospects. Your goal is to change the customer’s perception about you. (Inbound marketing starts here) DEMAND Here, you need to work on generating demand for your product by making a compelling case for a trial or evaluation, increased usage, and ultimately a preference for it. You are pulling the market towards your product. (Growth hacking fits here) EXPERIENCE Here, you’ve got a customer or user. Now you need to make sure they fully experience the value of your product, not just initially, but throughout the lifecycle of their usage, and every time they use it. The more value they receive, the more retention power you have over them, and the stronger the relationship becomes. LOYALTY Loyalty is the ultimate reward of a satisfied customer that has benefited from your product. And the best manifestation of that loyalty is when they refer your product to others (via a self-initiated viral action, or as requested by you), and when they become your advocates. This, in turn will increase your products' awareness in the marketplace, because consumers and business users alike follow the recommendations of their friends and peers.
The simple narrative of marketing is that you need to move your product from generating Awareness for it, to driving Demand, to delivering the best customer Experience, and Supporting your users so they will refer you to others. No matter how you want to slice it, every single thing you will do in marketing is part of something else. That “something else” is either a) driving Awareness, b) generating Demand, c) enhancing the Experience of your customers, or d) earning their Loyalty. You are already developing a great product. Why not pair it with great marketing?
Not everybody needs to know marketing, but everybody needs to understand what marketing does.
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