Marketing is the process of getting people interested in your services or products. It involves lots of actions, such as researching, promoting, and finally selling the intended goods or services. What many people don’t know is the fact that marketing has several specializations that people can pursue.
From social media marketing all the way to email marketing, there are more than ten different types of marketing specializations and each of them allows you to utilize a specific channel, media form, or outlet in order to market and advertise your product.
Depending on your company or brand, certain types of marketing specializations might be more beneficial than others. For example, if you’re selling clothing, your brand might benefit the most from product and social media marketing.
We’re going to break down the various types of marketing specializations and let you know more about what each area of study focuses on in terms of researching, planning, and finally executing different marketing strategies and promotional campaigns.
WHAT ARE MARKETING SPECIALIZATIONS?
Simply put, a marketing specialization is a specific area of study that a person can pursue either through a marketing course, training, or formal education. These courses or study programs generally focus on the process of campaign building with the ultimate goal of promoting a brand, service, or product.
Within each of these specializations, there are several career paths you can take. For example, if you choose to specialize in content marketing, you’ll be able to get a job as a content writer, editor, researcher, or even project manager.
Each marketing specialization has a different approach to getting people interested and promoting a brand or service. This means that how you go about researching, planning, creating, and executing your strategy will vary depending on which specialization you choose to go for.
TYPES OF MARKETING SPECIALIZATION TO CHOOSE FROM
Content Marketing
Content marketing is all about writing unique and optimized pieces of text or copy. This includes writing various blogs, articles, landing pages, or any other texts in order to attract customers to your website, app, or anything else.
Those who work in content marketing will typically focus on researching, coordinating, and finally writing and publishing content. The main point of content marketing is to make these pieces of writing unique, informative, and engaging.
Typically, an article or blog will help the audience learn something, solve a challenge, or will prove to be useful in a different way. This type of content will ensure that you build a meaningful and trustworthy relationship with your audience.
Also, a carefully written and consistent blogging website, for example, will establish your brand as knowledgable and reliable, which will set it apart from competitors and bring you more business in the future.
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing encompasses a large variety of media outlets that are found online. The main purpose of digital marketing is to bring more awareness to your brand and attract a bigger audience.
Similarly, a digital marketing strategy helps businesses or brands to not only reach more potential customers and leads but also increase conversions and sales. Different digital channels and formats can be utilized to implement a digital marketing strategy, including websites, search engines, social media platforms, and emails.
This means that digital marketing can be interpreted as a broader term, as it encompasses other marketing specializations. Those who work in digital marketing can choose from many career paths, including content writing, research, design, and even paid advertising.
Visual Marketing
Visual marketing refers to the branch of marketing that uses visuals to bring awareness to a brand. These visuals can be images, flyers, posters, logos, or infographics. Typically, if you specialize in visual marketing, you can search for a career in graphic design or web design.
These marketing specialists use various design forms and formats to advertise and promote a company, brand, or product. If you specialize in graphic design, you’ll be responsible for making featured images, social media visuals, charts, or any other material that’s intended to be displayed on different digital outlets.
On the other hand, web designers will build website layouts, and they will oftentimes be in charge of making a website easy to navigate and user-friendly in terms of design.
Social Media Marketing
One of the most popular specializations of marketing, social media marketing has been taking over the digital world. Nowadays, there are more and more platforms that businesses and brands can use to attract new customers and connect with existing ones.
Social media managers usually use a set of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. A typical job description of a social media manager includes preparing and scheduling social media posts, writing copies, and sometimes even creating visuals.
Other important duties include carefully monitoring important KPIs and social media marketing statistics, such as follower growth, engagement, website clicks, CTA clicks, and more.
The purpose of social media marketing is to publish engaging and informative content for your audience. These can include various product announcements, advertisements, industry news, fun facts, or anything else that’s relevant to the brand or service you’re trying to sell.
Direct Marketing
Direct marketing is all about targeting specific people, brands, or companies to generate new business. Aside from getting them on board with your brand, you can also use direct marketing to raise the profile of a business or product, or make sales.
Popular types of direct marketing include telemarketing, direct mail, and even email marketing. This marketing specialization is based on the biggest sales advantage of them all, which is the opportunity to directly communicate with potential customers and build meaningful, long-lasting relationships with them.
It doesn’t require any pricy advertising techniques or methods, such as radio, newspaper, or TV advertising. You can simply reach your target audience directly through direct messages or mail. It’s important to note that since you’re getting in touch directly with other people or brands, this kind of marketing is governed by strict privacy regulations.
So, in order to implement a successful direct marketing campaign, you must be familiar with these regulations and follow them closely in order to avoid mishaps. If you stand by all the rules, this kind of marketing can be extremely beneficial to your business, product, or service.
Product Marketing
Just like the name suggests, product marketing professionals are in charge of developing the positioning, pricing and messaging of a certain product. This includes making important decisions about how and where to place and advertise products, both online and in stores.
Their job is to make a product visually appealing to the target audience in order to increase revenue. The product must also be easily accessible and it needs to meet the needs of consumers.
Product marketing also involves the preparation and release of various promotional materials to the brand’s target audience. It also consists of monitoring and reviewing the results provided by research marketers, since this information can be extremely beneficial for future strategy development, forecasts, and ultimately the increase of sales and awareness.
Influencer Marketing
In the era of social media, influencer marketing has become increasingly popular and it’s been proven to provide some stellar results. On average, brands who used influencers to market their product or service saw a significant increase in ROI.
This type of marketing involves getting endorsements and product placements from influential accounts either on Instagram, Facebook, or any other social network. When choosing this kind of marketing, it’s important to closely monitor your KPIs.
It’s also essential to choose an influencer or celebrity that makes sense for your business, brand, or product. For example, if you’re trying to sell fitness equipment, it makes sense to hire a fitness or lifestyle influencer, as they’re the most likely to have an audience that’ll be interested in purchasing your product.
Also, since their audience trusts their opinions and reviews, your products are way more likely to sell, meaning you’ll get much more revenue than if you were to use traditional marketing methods, such as paid ads.
Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing or SEM has become increasingly popular in the past decade. This marketing tactic uses the best SEO (search engine optimization) practices to drive more traffic to your website, which ultimately results in increased leads, conversions, and sales.
There are two different methods that can be used for search engine marketing: paid search and organic traffic growth. While paid search gives you pretty much instant results, organic growth takes a little bit longer.
On the brighter side, organic growth is proven to give you great results over a longer period of time, and it’s also free, making it the best SEM practice. Since search engines are constantly changing and evolving, an SEM or SEO expert must always follow updates and industry-related news.
Email Marketing
As the name itself suggests, email marketing campaigns focus on crafting emails that will target potential or current consumers. Typically, email marketing campaigns consist of several emails, each of which covers the various stages of the buying process.
Additionally, email marketing can be used as a great strategy to bring awareness to special offers, new product launches, important announcements, or newsletters. All of these kinds of emails serve the purpose of engaging your audience in a meaningful way.
A business may also choose to use an email marketing service. Marketers will usually analyze and dissect the results of their email marketing campaigns and they’ll try to come up with innovative and clever tactics to better connect with their audience and drive more leads and sales.
One of the best ways to approach email marketing is to localize your emails, which basically means adjusting your campaign according to your audience’s location. If you’re a beginner in email marketing, don’t worry – there are tons of courses available online.
Affiliate Marketing
Though it might sound similar, influencer marketing and affiliate marketing are actually quite different. While influencer marketing focuses on getting endorsements from influencers and celebrities, affiliate marketing is all about using affiliates to implement marketing strategies and campaigns which bring you more revenue.
This popular marketing tactic actually brings revenue to both the affiliate and the business. The affiliate’s job is to earn commission on each product or service they manage to sell. Typically, affiliates will use affiliated links to track visitors or sales they made.
While influencers promote a brand or product for a fixed fee, an affiliate will make small amounts of money each time someone uses their link to purchase something. This means that you don’t have to have a huge following in order to earn money, since you’re not getting paid according to your following size.
One industry that’s known for using affiliate marketing to drive sales is e-commerce. They pay their affiliates by sale, lead, or even click.
Research Marketing
Market research or research marketing involves collecting and analyzing data from various channels, including information on competitors, target audiences, and insight on potential customers.
There are several ways in which someone can do market research. For example, a business might opt to survey their current customers, or they might decide to gather insight and conduct market research through social media analytics, website analytics, or any other valuable source.
Research marketing is an extremely important aspect of managing and maintaining a successful marketing strategy and campaign. This invaluable information provides more detailed directions on how you can optimize your campaign to bring you the most traffic, leads, or revenue.
Brand Management Marketing
The brand manager’s job is to establish and maintain a clear image and voice of a brand. Other duties include making sure that the brand has a positive reputation, as well as that it’s represented accurately and professionally across all platforms.
Monitoring key industry trends is also a big part of brand management marketing. It’s crucial to ensure that you’re catering all your marketing efforts towards your target audience, and that’s exactly what this marketing specialization is all about.
Establishing clear guidelines in order to gain and maintain the interest of your audience is achieved by closely monitoring their behavior and engagement. It’s also important to research and determine how to effectively make your product or service stand out from its competitors.
Database Marketing
Database marketing includes working with a specific database of potential clients or existing customers. It’s a form of direct marketing that focuses on promoting and selling products or services to a predetermined audience.
There are two main types of marketing databases that can be utilized: business databases and consumer databases. Each of these databases has its own set of privacy policies and laws that must be strictly followed.
Typically, an organization will collect user data, such as name, email, or even phone numbers, and will sell this to businesses and corporations to use in their marketing campaigns and efforts. Unfortunately, many people consider this form of marketing to be junk or spam.
Video Marketing
Another great marketing strategy that’s particularly popular with social media is video marketing. As the name itself suggests, it involves creating promotional videos, commercials, or video ads. As a video creator or editor, you can look for careers in video marketing.
Typically, someone working in video marketing will be responsible for creating product demonstrations, commercials, or even tutorials, all of which have the intention of engaging your audience in a way that makes sense for your brand.
The main focus of video marketing efforts is educating your audience and providing an enriching experience that will persuade them towards making a purchase or simply following your business.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT MARKETING SPECIALIZATION FOR YOURSELF
Anyone who’s looking to start a career in marketing will have to face the difficult question: Which marketing specialization to choose? The answer will depend on what you’re looking for in your career and what your current skill set is.
For example, if you’re good with data and crunching numbers, you might want to consider research or database marketing. On the flip side, if you enjoy writing, a career in content marketing might be the perfect choice for you.
If you’re a highly visual and creative person, you will most likely be a great candidate for visual or video marketing. It’s important to narrow down your options and become more targeted. This will help you achieve greater success in your career.
A strong focus on a specific marketing field will help you build your knowledge and experience and become an expert in your specialization of choice. This will establish you as a true marketing professional.
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