12 Types of Marketing You Need to Know About

Marketing is the lifeblood of a business and has evolved quickly over the last few decades. 

In the past, you could post an ad in the newspaper, pass out flyers, or advertise with a billboard; it was enough to drive business to your door. Nowadays, it is much more than billboards and newspaper ads. Consumers are flooded with advertisements via social media, TV, and streaming services. 

Marketing is a way to create brand awareness, communicate products and services to target audiences, and connect with and influence potential customers. Therefore, your marketing plan should be tailored to your company size, goals, and marketing priorities.

Depending on the goal of each type of marketing strategy, every business can use a mix of these methods to target their desired audience and increase overall leads and revenue.

In this post, we are breaking down 12 different types of marketing you need to know about. Let’s dive in!

Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing methods are those promotions you see offline– Tactics like newspaper ads, billboards, radio ads, and commercials. These marketing strategies have been around long before the internet emerged, and while seemingly dead, traditional marketing lives on! 

Many businesses still succeed through sponsorship opportunities, television ads, billboards, and promotional mail.

Digital Marketing

Like traditional marketing, digital marketing is a way to connect with and influence your target audience. The difference is that you do this through a combination of online channels rather than offline. Some excellent digital marketing channels include video content, social media posts, content marketing, web, social media paid advertising, and search engine marketing.

Digital marketing is beneficial for increasing brand awareness and industry authority, boosting website traffic, and increasing overall leads and revenue.

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing refers to promoting your product or service to consumers who weren’t actively looking to purchase anything. Outbound marketing intends to bring awareness to your products or services to generate leads. Some common outbound marketing strategies include subscriber emails, cold calling, and billboards.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is the exact opposite of outbound marketing. Inbound marketing focuses on creating high-quality content that attracts customers to your brand, followed by engagement through email marketing and chat features.

Content Marketing

Content marketing covers any marketing efforts that use content assets—for example, blog posts, infographics, eBooks, videos, webinars, etc. Content marketing assets build brand awareness and drive clicks, leads, and sales. Most importantly, when you combine these assets correctly, you develop a clear, long-term marketing strategy for your business. 

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of online marketing, and it’s still going strong. Most businesses use email marketing for nurturing leads, advertising special deals, highlighting content, or promoting an event. 

Many businesses use lead capture forms to build a mailing list of clients and potential leads. Email marketing offers the opportunity to reach those on the mailing list who may not be on many of the more popular online platforms, like social media.

Social Media Marketing

Using platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, many businesses can connect with their audiences while organically promoting their products and services for free.

While effective when operating on a tighter budget, organic marketing on social media takes much more time and effort than paid marketing efforts.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing, commonly known as SEM, is the process of getting your business visible on search engine results pages (SERPs). There are two types of SEM: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC). 

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the technique used by digital marketing professionals to get web pages and blog posts to rank organically on SERPs. If you rank highly, you’ll attract relevant traffic to your website. However, it takes more skill and know-how to get on the front page of Google with SEM rather than paid search advertising.

Pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising covers any online marketing where the advertising business pays each time a user clicks on an ad. Some commonly used PPC strategies include Google Ads and paid social media advertising.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing intends to reach an existing group of engaged followers on social media. Influencers have built loyalty and trust with an audience your business might be trying to reach. 

Finding an influencer that aligns with your brand and target audience is important to ensure your strategy and goals will be met.

Partner Marketing

Partner marketing, commonly known as co-marketing, involves collaborating with brands who partner up on a marketing campaign and share the effects. For partner marketing to be most effective, brands must-have products or services that complement each other and have similar user personas. 

Partner marketing is an excellent strategy to generate leads and attract an audience you haven’t reached.

Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing is a marketing strategy used to form more profound, more meaningful relationships with consumers, building long-term brand loyalty. Relationship marketing is essential for retaining customers and developing industry authority.

A great way to leverage relationship marketing is to share testimonials and case studies on your website and social media platforms.

User-generated Marketing

User-generated marketing is when businesses allow consumers to participate in a marketing campaign by creating marketing material. User-generated marketing is a cost-effective way to connect with your target audience and increase brand awareness.

Customers may not always trust what you say about your product, but they will trust what actual customers say.

Final Thoughts

Marketing is essential for business success. While there is no perfect marketing strategy, the most successful businesses are those willing to invest the time and money to find what works best for their brands. Marketing success does require hard work, patience, and trial and error. 

In the end, as long as you have the right target audience and are seeing a return on your investment, there is no right or wrong way to use these marketing strategies.
Are you ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level? Digital marketing is the marketing of the future, and we’re here to help you build an effective, long-term plan to help your business grow. Book a free marketing audit with our team today!