Blog courtesy of Lucy Siegel from Bridge Global Strategies

A January article in Forbes referred to a survey done by the Fournaise Marketing Group on marketing. Of the executives surveyed, 73 percent said they don’t believe marketing is significantly tied to revenue creation. Until very recently, marketing people have had a very tough time proving that marketing is indeed tied to revenue creation. But what I will call “new marketing,” a mix of today’s hottest marketing trends, is directly associated with revenue creation, and “new marketers” can easily prove this link.

What I mean by “new marketing” is online marketing that engages people so that they become loyal followers of a brand or a company, by providing them with content they want rather than using a sales pitch. There are a number of terms being used to describe this trend in marketing, including content marketing and inbound marketing.

Remember when online media was called “new media?” Online media is now old hat, because just about everyone, everywhere, is online, so the term “new media” has received a quiet burial.

I predict the same thing will happen to “new marketing.” Five years from now, everyone will be using this type of marketing. My hunch is that in just a few years a survey of executives such as the one Fournaise did will show a huge swing of opinion about the connection of marketing to revenue generation.

Another prediction: public relations professionals will have to learn “new marketing” if they want to survive in the profession. Not only will marketing public relations people have to immerse themselves in new marketing, corporate communications and corporate PR professionals will, too. Their jobs are managing the reputations of their companies or their clients’ companies, and they will be using “new marketing” techniques to build a larger audience for their companies’ messages and develop corporate brand equity.

It’s safe to say that one of the biggest headaches many PR people now have is being able to provide quantitative measurement of the results of their work. Most public relations professionals see themselves as “right brain” people, creative types. Quantitative disciplines are an anathema to many of my PR colleagues. However, as new marketing takes hold more and more, those who don’t want anything to do with quantitative measurement will find themselves out in the cold.

It’s time for PR departments of companies and PR professionals at agencies to get over their quantitative phobia and learn the basics of new marketing.

Below are a few basic terms used by online marketers that most PR people may have heard bandied about but don’t really understand. These aren’t all newly-minted marketing terms, but some of the older terms now have different meanings than they did when first used years ago. I’d welcome your comments on some additional “must know” new marketing terms.

• Inbound marketing: Marketing strategies that help you “get found” online by people who are already interested in the services and/or products you offer, then convert visitors to your website to “leads” – potential customers. These strategies depend on offering useful, high quality content on your website to draw visitors. Inbound marketing focuses on choosing the most appropriate keywords that visitors would use to try to search for a company like yours. In addition to high quality content, careful use of search engine optimization (SEO) of the website is another important component of inbound marketing. Inbound marketers use social media channels as well as email marketing to spread the word about the content available on their websites.

• Call-to-action: a button or hyperlinked text that website visitors click on to take an action (such as download a whitepaper, sign up for a newsletter, watch a video, etc.). Calls-to-action lead to landing pages.

• Landing page: the website page visitors land on when they click on a link.

• Marketing automation: the use of software platforms developed for marketers to streamline and simplify a series of marketing processes. Marketing automation software helps manage the processes used to generate and qualify online sales leads and then “nurture” those leads to convert sales leads to customers. Marketing automation is used to increase the level of engagement of customers and potential customers.

• Marketing analytics: The collection of marketing data and analysis of that data to measure the effectiveness of marketing strategies and tactics and develop insights that will help improve marketing effectiveness over time.

• Sales funnel: a way of describing the typical sales process. At the top of the funnel is a broad spectrum of sales prospects who have not yet been qualified. At the middle of the funnel are qualified sales prospects and at the bottom of the funnel are actual customers.

• Big data: This term has grown exponentially in its use. It began as a computer geek expression and sometime over the last couple of years it entered the marketing mainstream. Ad Age defined it just a few months ago: “Big Data refers to relatively large amounts of structured and unstructured data that require machine-based systems and technologies in order to be fully analyzed. The much-hyped term has inspired a slew of definitions, many of which involve the concepts of massive volume, velocity and variety of information. In other words, what turns data into Big Data is the amount of information, and the speed at which it can be created, collected and analyzed.”

If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with public relations, marketing or crisis communications, contact Scott Public Relations.

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