What is marketing mix?
The combination of marketing channels in your marketing effort is called your marketing mix. It's important to continually consider both the priorities and synergies between the channels you invest your time and money in, so that you use your resources appropriately.
There are basically three types of marketing channels:
- Paid media - channels you pay to expose your content on. Includes print advertising, TV advertising, digital advertising, influencers and sponsorships.
- Owned media - channels you own and can expose your content on. Includes websites, blogs, apps, social media, newsletters, e-books and webinars.
- Earned media - channels that mention you and your content voluntarily. Includes reviews, recommendations, comparison sites, news, shares and likes.
Analyse your marketing mix, mapping out which marketing channels you invest in, how much money you invest in each channel, what the return on each channel is, and at which stages of your customers' buying journey each channel is most effective.
This knowledge is an important asset when prioritising your marketing efforts, i.e. allocating your budget to the most profitable channels. A surprising number of companies in both B2B- and B2C-segment doesn't have that knowledge because they don't collect data, and if you're among them, data collection needs to be a priority
A simplified model of the purchase journey
The optimal marketing mix typically includes both channels that increase interest in your product and visibility for your company once interest is created. However, an interest-generating marketing effort is not always strictly necessary if an interest and a need for your product arise naturally.
It is impossible to establish a formula for the optimal distribution of marketing channels. It depends on your products, your target audience, your industry, your budget and your skills, among other things. Your goal is to put together the marketing mix that delivers the maximum return for the least amount of resources. If you have any questions about the composition of your marketing mix, please feel free to contact us.
The most important marketing competence according to Microsoft
Microsoft has recently released a studywhich identifies the key trends in marketing for the 2020s. The survey, based on responses from 600 selected senior marketers, identifies search engine optimization (SEO) as the most important professional competence of the new decade.
It hardly comes as a surprise digital marketersthat SEO is an important part of your marketing mix - but why is it the most important skill according to Microsoft? Unfortunately, the Microsoft survey doesn't provide any answers, but we have a good guess:
Our analysis Marketing channels 2020 compares the performance of different online marketing channels based on 122 million user data from Danish websites. The result is clear: almost half of all visitors to Danish business websites come from Google search results (organic traffic):
Visitors from Google are also the ones who have the most valuable user behaviour. On e-commerce websites, visitors from Google search results (organic traffic) make 44.94 % of all purchases. In comparison, visitors from social media make only 1.62 % of all purchases and visitors from email make 5.23 % of all purchases. Download the marketing analysis here.
Professional skills go hand in hand
The most important professional marketing skills according to the Microsoft survey are (in order of importance):
- SEO
- Data analysis
- Text version
- Behavioural analysis
- Automation
If you want to succeed with your SEO strategy, you need to possess several skills on the list:
Data analysis is necessary when you need to evaluate the impact of the work. Continuous evaluation ensures that you are using your time and resources wisely, while providing a basis for further prioritisation and optimisation of your work.
Text version is necessary when you need to write content to your website. The only thing Google can understand in terms of content is text. Good, well-crafted text content that matches the search habits of your target audience is therefore crucial to your visibility on Google.
Behavioural analysis is necessary, both when you map your target audience's search habits on Google and when evaluating the impact of your work. Mapping your target audience's search habits is important because it provides insights into what content will attract your audience.
Automation is not yet an important skill in the SEO industry. While data collection and reporting can be automated, SEO is still largely a very manual process. One of the latest trends in automation is machine-generated text, although this is still only applicable to a few companies.
