12 secrets of marketing and you won't believe what happens next by Naimul Huq (Business , Marketing Learning)

Naimul Huq, an alumnus of the More head-Cain Scholars Program at UNC, is currently working as a Social Media Associate at WCG in Austin. He works to change how businesses interact with their consumers through better communication, analysis, and engagement.

Understand Your Audience: Successful marketing begins with a deep understanding of your target audience. Know their needs, preferences, and behaviors.

Create Compelling Content: Content is king. Develop engaging and valuable content that resonates with your audience. This includes blog posts, videos, infographics, and more.

Build a Strong Brand: A strong brand creates trust and recognition. Invest in creating a consistent brand image across all platforms.

Utilize Social Media: Leverage social media platforms to connect with your audience. Choose the platforms that align with your target demographic.

SEO Strategy: Implement a solid Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy to improve your online visibility and rank higher in search engine results.

Email Marketing: Build and nurture your email list. Email marketing is a powerful tool for direct communication with your audience.

Customer Reviews and Testimonials: Positive reviews and testimonials build credibility. Encourage satisfied customers to share their experiences.

Partnerships and Collaborations: Form partnerships with other businesses or influencers to extend your reach and credibility.

Data Analytics: Use data analytics tools to gather insights about customer behavior. This information can guide your marketing strategy.

Mobile Optimization: Ensure that your website and marketing materials are optimized for mobile devices, as a significant portion of internet users access content through mobile.

Customer Engagement: Engage with your audience through social media, forums, and other platforms. Respond to comments and messages promptly.

Adaptability: The marketing landscape is dynamic. Stay updated on industry trends and be willing to adapt your strategies to stay relevant.

 

Business , Marketing Learning from Naimul Huq 

I'm going to reveal to you the 12 steps

to winning it marketing and what happens

next is that well there are only four

steps create share some kind of magical

process and profit in order to succeed

in marketing you have to create

something representative of yourself and

your audience and distribute it in the

right way in reality there is some

assembly required the one idea I want to

express today is that marketing is

complex because it strives to understand

human beings and human beings are

perplexing but you have the tools to

understand them you just need to look

for the right things and there are

twelve steps we'll start with the voice

who are you what can you promise me and

how can you live that promise every day

corporations may or may not have human

rights but they're filled with people

who strive every single day to live up

to the ideal of their organization red

Bull has a loud voice it's not just loud

it's one of the strongest brand voices

on earth not just among beverages or

pick me up so that promise is wings an

an alternate reality where you can freefall

from the edge of space at the speed of

sound or perfect that kickflip the

people at Red Bull express their

identity through dazzling content fueled

with adrenaline when I was embedded in

their office I observed the massive

the dedicated team of data scientists brand

evangelists gut-driven executives and

multimedia heroes who represented this

voice from behind the edge of a blue and

silver can their voice is just as strong

as a visual identity the field of visual

identity was pioneered by Gordon

Lippincott a one-time engineer turned

industrial designer who coined the

phrase corporate identity and gave

brands the storytelling capacity to

compete in a crowded market

Lippincott introduced evolution brands

aren't anything new merchants have been

marketing their goods

centuries but he literally wrote the

book on business for design for business

and his production from the Campbell

Soup label to the big G in General Mills

to the pervasive and ever consistent

coca-cola brand globally gave us a new

idea of the the promise that Goods

engendered in the marketplace Paula

Scher is one of the most prolific and

active designers in the world and she

more than anyone knows that anyone has a

challenge when when bringing a story to

life in the comic here there's a

designer presenting her work to a client

and the client saying why should I have

to pay you so much if it only took you

ten minutes to make this to which she

responds I studied for ten years to be

able to create this in 10 minutes when

Paula Scher was tasked with designing

the logo of Citibank she actually drew

it on a napkin in less than a minute and

then she spent a whole year with boards

justifying her intuition and her

expertise justifying the symbolism

behind it only to come back to an

assembly that mirrored what was on the

napkin in the first place and this is

because people have a strong attraction

to trivial matters it's actually called

Parkinson's Law of triviality and what

it means it argues that that

organizations will give undue weights to

trivial ideas and it's something that no

matter what assembly you're pursuing

you're going to have to contend with

many of you will recognize this building

the Moorhead planetarium houses the

offices of the oldest Merit Scholarship

in the country and in their history

they've not only grown in network and

promise but they've also seen their

example mimicked in other institutions

and despite their position is the first

and the oldest this necessitated the

development of a brand identity and a

differential line of implementation this

need evolved over time as all things do

as their audience renewed and changed

and had different values so they tasked

us with revitalizing the branding and we

analyzed and researched and drew upon

the best practices of others and came up

with multiple iterations that ultimately

resulted in their most current present

expression branding should speak to an

audience on

a level I should evoke an emotional

response if it's intended to inspire as

per view should be grand the color is

the thought that typography even the

space between the brand and the next

thing on the page so because it exists

only to support your message the

Moorhead KS audience is adaptive and the

branding needed to be adaptable it needs

to be built on the latest technologies

the website needs to be current

responsive and flexible so that whether

a high school was looking at the website

for the first time on a smartphone or an

alumni was considering a generous gift

from their tablet device the gravitas of

that institution was alive if there's

one thing that has completely

revolutionized marketing strategy its

the abundance and accessibility of data

data today isn't just big it's

incomprehensible the former chief

scientist of amazon.com said that in

2009 more data was created than the

entire history of the world preceding it

it's the proliferation of Pocket

computers that are all interconnected

with sensors all over the world that

have unleashed a flood of information so

violent that even the metric system

struggles to define it beyond the

academic benefits of being able to see

that price gouging of textbooks and the

absurd rise of cost relative to consumer

goods data gives us insights into human

behaviors marketing used to be driven by

focus groups but like the elementary

particles in Heisenberg's uncertainty

principle experiments when we're

observed we change our behaviors when

we're speeding downstream we see a cop

we slow down if we're in a focus group

of moms we're unlikely to admit to

sharing junk food with our kids social

conversation is volunteered on the other

hand that's a public declaration of our

beliefs we check in to our favorite

haunts we spit vitriol about cable

companies and during the USA Germany

game in 2014 we let loose on the kind of

unfiltered racism that's a direct line

to understanding who people really are

my clients understand that data is the

most powerful tool in the storytelling

toolkit Pfizer got rid of the Viva

viagra asthma

realize that men were searching on

Google about questions about edy that

were completely different from what they

were saying on forums we built a model

for Warner Brothers that predicts future

home video sales with 90 percent

accuracy based on social conversation

and public data redbull will look to see

what the most happening place on a

campus is based on location service

check-ins and send a wings team over to

make it a party the data exists because

media channels have changed the way we

consume and share information if you

haven't seen a peso model in your

marketing classes yet you will a sensor

paid earn shared and own and it stands

for your advertising which is scaleable

your external endorsements which are

credible your shared media property like

social which makes you authentic and

your website which is where you define

who you are campaigns have to be

integrated today because your target

audience never stays in one place and

they all like different things we worked

with 180 la on the campaign called two

days of beat for HP they made a laptop

for young people it's a tablet and a

computer in one and they wanted to prove

how powerful it was so they recruited

clamps casino to produce and vic mensa

to MC and they asked people to comment

on YouTube and turn those comments into

actual music and they life speed stream

that creative process over the web for

two days and showed how artists and

Millennials could bring a product to

life through art they surrounded their

audience with this message and the

reason they were successful is it was

born from hardwork and insight sometimes

the task is even greater Dov used to be

the number one brand in men's body wash

Procter & Gamble was in a scrap yellow

spice brand and my friend at Wyden

Kennedy knew that the audience which was

made up mostly of women who make the

consumer decisions in the household

needed to be talked to so they came up

with this campaign and ahead kind of

Keanu Reeves sort of character surfer

dude speaking directly to the audience

but they had to find the brand voice yet

not until this guy showed up and said

look at your man now look at me and I

look back at your man now look back to

me this is Isaiah Mustafa and the rest

is history the steamy Old Spice

Superbowl ad went viral now here's the

thing they never

actually aired this ad during the

Superbowl this was the genius of the

marketers over there they called USA

Today and they said how do you figure

out what you're going to include in your

wrap up and they said well we just go on

YouTube and see what videos people are

talking about and I said alright well

we're going to buy all the ads for Old

Spice Superbowl commercial and get it

into your wrap-up and that got 40

million views was lightning in a bottle

it turned into its own meme it won ton

of awards Old Spice rocketed to number

one cat in the Batman's Body Wash

category and Isaiah Mustafa won an Emmy

Award and he showed to me when I went

and visited his house it's cool story

I'll tell you later

so so if I learn all this now I'm done

right kind of new things will always

emerge but the one thing that will never

change is that marketing is an effort to

understand human behavior technology and

media will evolve the future of Facebook

is it will become infrastructure like

email right we will use the sign onto

websites an augmented reality like the

oculus rift which I tried last week will

change the way we consume media I did

not want to take that thing off

mainstream adoption of new media will

accelerate the White House published our

2016 budget on medium and github and if

you don't know what those things are

they'll probably go away in a couple

years it doesn't really matter

language itself is evolving the language

the English that we use today is

different from the English of Beowulf

organizations will always try to co-opt

the lexicon to clinic with young people

and that's not limited to the National

Republican convention no one watches TV

anymore

half of people are using a smartphone

when they're watching TV and the brand

impression just doesn't come through

half of online ads are actually not seen

data from Google shows this so what does

this all mean for today's marketer that

traditional marketing techniques are

ineffective and that we have to become

experts in digital and that social media

and analytics are part of the job so

let's bring this all together and show

how we bridge to profit lap bands had

been ignored by their parent company for

five years and declining sales and

Sharaf voice meant that they were losing

out so we did the analysis and found

three key insights Banda's perceives

ineffective because of bad aftercare

support from surgeons many patients were

using a bad diet and peer to peer

recommendations were the most effective

way in converting patients so

approach was to teach the doctors teach

the patients find the prospects and

surround them with messaging that can

bring lap Bend into their life so we

introduced new advertising that was

driven by patients stories we found in

social media my daughter can hug me

fully I can wear this dress again it

fits and that became the tagline of the

campaign we connected those patient

advocates with the potential patients we

gave them a new opportunity to have a

platform to talk directly to the

patients we took their stories and put

it in social media we took those

advocates and put them on the dr. Oz

Show and then when people went online

afterwards to find out wasn't this whole

dr. oz lap-band thing was we had a bunch

of paid advertisements that directed

them to a customized experience on the

website and it was skinned as seen on

dr. oz and it had the brand voice and it

had that compelling story and conversion

fell out of this it cost them less to

convert than ever before every metric

went up but most importantly they

exceeded their sales target by 25% it

was all due to conversions which Jackson

Pollock's so aptly Illustrated when

things come together even chaotically

the results can be beautiful so what

about that third step create share

succeed success is a series of small

wins compounded by what you learn with

every when effort and a discerning mind

are the bridge to profit accolades

rewards mastery or whatever outcome you

hope to achieve the process repeats

itself in successful people never view

their success with finality every time

they ask better questions and as a

result they get better answers and come

closer than ever before to understanding

human behavior and you won't believe

what happens next thank you