Are you looking for a marketing strategy that will give you the results you were hoping for? With these 50 different types of marketing techniques discussed, you can choose the one that suits your business the best.
As the technological field is advancing, so are the marketing strategies. Where first people relied on offline ways, now, with the world digitizing, many different online tactics have also been developed.
Check out some popular marketing types to help your brand build more names and attract more audiences.
1. B2B Marketing
B2B, meaning “business to business” marketing, is a marketing technique where one business targets another business as its customer. This marketing needs a longer buying cycle with more strategies to know what the target audience’s needs are.
B2B marketing’s purchase intent is often higher than any other marketing technique, meaning buyers usually do comprehensive research on the products and services they want to buy.
In this, marketers usually find marketing qualified leads (MQLs) in their sales funnel. They then use sales development to make sales calls and do product trials.
Some examples are companies marketing at trade shows, account-based marketing campaigns, and inbound marketing strategies.
2. B2C Marketing
B2C marketing is “business to consumer” marketing where businesses directly target consumers to sell their products and services. The sales cycles of this marketing type are shorter than B2B as it has a broader audience, and consumers don’t have to go through the decision-making process.
For better results, businesses must be up-to-date with consumer behavior and the latest marketing trends.
Examples of B2C marketing are social media ads, influencer marketing, coupons, and TV advertisements.
3. Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing comprises most of the marketing techniques. But what makes it on its own? This is a long-term strategy where you need to focus on organically attracting potential customers without running after them.
The potential customers research the products on their own and move on to the buyer’s stage at their own pace.
This type works on three pillars:
Attract: creating relevant and valuable content.
Engage: using email marketing, chatbots, and giving consumers value.
Delight: right, providing solutions to their problems through your products.
One of the most common examples of this method is content marketing, which we will discuss in the coming points.
4. Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing includes businesses chase customers by cold calling them, sending them flyers, and presenting ads and commercials. This non-organic method was highly used before digital marketing came onto the scene.
The reason it is called outbound marketing is because, here, businesses push a message out to the public to increase their brand awareness.
This method is still used today through email blasts and email campaigns, even targeting those not interested in their offerings, which sometimes may irritate them.
Although it is somewhat criticized, you can immensely profit from this method if you have a proper vision and a targeted audience.
5. Content Marketing
With content marketing, you engage your audience by educating them about what you have to you offer.
Content marketing involves creating content based on the problems of your targeted audience and providing them with answers through your brand, product, and industry.
You just have to provide niche-relevant content, and you can attract the right customers.
Examples include blogs, e-books, videos, social media posts, webinars, etc.
6. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing uses social media platforms for marketing, i.e., to share information about your brand, what you do, and what you have to offer. This is a cost-effective marketing technique that can be used by any business out there to promote their business and attract customers.
This marketing can be in the form of paid ads, posting attractive images, creating relevant posts, marketing flyer templates etc.
The main thing that makes this marketing technique successful is providing relevant content and consistently posting it.
7. Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing, also known as SEM, is a marketing technique where search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are used to advertise promotional content.
These are either PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertisement), a paid ad, or SEO-optimized content (Search Engine Optimization) that ranks higher on SERP.
When you market your brand on these platforms, your business’s landing page or blog page is exposed to the audience on the search engine result page. They will then click on the link and reach your website to learn more about what you are offering.
8. Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing was mainly used when the internet was not in action. These were done on offline channels through outbound techniques such as billboards, TV ads, radio promotions, flyers, and print ads. You can measure radio advertising costs to make sure your traditional marketing budget is used effectively.
9. Digital Marketing
When we are talking about marketing, we cannot miss digital marketing. This type uses digital methods to reach the right audience, employing comprehensive adtech stacks to enhance targeting and efficiency.
It does not comprise just one marketing technique but rather many, where one method can be used in combination with another.
Digital marketing is done online and optimized for digital devices such as mobile phones and desktops.
10. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a strategy in which a company pays a commission to another person or website to promote their product. The other party receives the rewards only when the customer buys the product from their platform.
With social media being more active in marketing, influencers leverage this technique to get more income. They include the link of the partnering brand in their content, and when a customer buys something using that link, the influence or the website gets paid. This benefits both the main brand and the one promoting their brand’s products.
Amazon is a huge online marketplace that offers an affiliate program.
This is an inexpensive way of spreading awareness about a brand. However, ensure that when using this technique, you don’t compare the brand’s product with your own; otherwise, your customers may be divided between the two.
11. Influencer Marketing
Influencers gain many followers and trust over time by engaging with their audience and showing their expertise in the niche. When you pay an influencer to promote your product or service, that’s known as influencer marketing.
In this strategy, first, you must check if they belong to your niche. Then, you have to set a budget, check the size of their audience, and finally reach out to them with your goals and vision, such as how to create a vision board that aligns with your brand.
You will, in return, have to pay them for promoting your brand. If you choose an influencer with 10,000 followers, they will cost you more as they have a wider audience than those with only 1,000 followers. To make informed decisions, it’s crucial to measure the impact of your influencer marketing campaigns. Many analytics tools can help track performance, providing insights into engagement, reach, and conversions.
12. Acquisition Marketing
As the name suggests, acquisition marketing is used to acquire new customers. Businesses use multiple strategies to attract new customers, such as improving content on their website, giving free stuff, or introducing educational materials.
Some examples include landing pages, social media, Google ads, top funnel blog content, SEO, etc. These directly focus on gaining new consumers and thus can be called acquisition marketing.
13. Outreach Marketing
Outreach marketing is like making friends with people who can talk about your brand online. These can be social media influencers, bloggers, journalists, or other businesses.
The idea is to bring your brand up on popular websites or social media pages. This makes your brand more respected in your area of business and helps more people know about it, ultimately improving your brand’s visibility.
Some companies also use outreach marketing as their link-building strategy to get links from other websites to their own.
14. Word-Of-Mouth Marketing
Have you ever bought a product after listening to your friend’s review? If yes, then those conversational reviews can be called word-of-mouth marketing.
This type of marketing usually occurs when a customer gets satisfied with a product and shares their thoughts about it with others based on their experience.
Many businesses, especially small businesses, have been using this strategy as a cost-effective marketing method. Although this is very powerful, you cannot force it to happen. For this, you need to make top-notch products so your satisfied customers can spread the word about your brand. Additionally, you can partner up with professional product development companies to enhance the quality and appeal of your offerings.
15. Referral Marketing
Referral marketing is commonly a marketing technique where you get rewarded if you bring a new customer.
For example, a brand like Fiverr, which is a freelancer marketplace, offers a reward of a 10% referral bonus on the first purchase for both the referral and the referree.
16. PR Marketing
Public Relations marketing, often called PR marketing, focuses on shaping media perceptions of your business through press releases.
While it may not straight away advertise your products or services, it effectively boosts brand visibility, which is crucial in B2B marketing, as it influences business buyers’ decisions based on your company’s competitive positioning.
It is excellent for improving your brand’s relationship with your customers and managing your reputation.
17. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a type of marketing technique where businesses send emails to their prospective customers or current customers to increase their sales, improve their brand awareness, retain their customers, or promote their services.
All you have to do is make a list of customers you want to send email. Make sure they are subscribed to your newsletter. Use an email marketing CRM to monitor and track how effective your email is.
You can also use email automation tools to make things easier and faster.
18. Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is a digital marketing tactic where the campaigns are developed to reach the audience’s mobile devices. To implement this marketing technique, you can use social media to reach your target audience or build a social media app that engages users effectively.
19. Telemarketing
Telemarketing is quite different from mobile marketing. In this type, companies usually call their prospective customers to tell them about the latest deals they have on their services or products.
For telemarketing, many companies have their dedicated call center, but now, since things are becoming automated, many are even using robocalls to reach their customers.
20. Voice Marketing
You might have been intrigued by the features of Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, Google’s voice assistant, or Apple’s Siri at least once. This idea of using smart speakers or speech features to address the users’ problems and provide answers quickly is known as voice marketing.
For example, while searching for anything on Google, you can use its voice assistant to type the query for you.
The catch here is to optimize your site for voice search and use the right keyword so the smart speaker understands and presents the right results according to the query.
21. Video Marketing
Any video you implement in your marketing strategy is known as video marketing.
You can include a video bubble on the homepage of your website or use YouTube videos from social media feeds and they are sure to improve the traffic on your website, brand awareness, and generate conversions.
By including videos, you can rest assured you will see a massive hike in the percentage of a positive ROI.
22. Conversational Marketing
The ability to have one-on-one conversations with your audience while providing instant answers is said to be conversational marketing, which is particularly valuable for a reputation management reseller.
Companies can include live chat features on their website, they also use other messengers like WhatsApp, social media channels, etc.
23. Contextual Marketing
Contextual marketing is a part of a comprehensive marketing where businesses target online users based on their browser activity. It is done through social channels or by showing ads on different websites based on a user’s online search.
This technique requires deep research and strategy to show the right content to the audience. However, using a CRM in conjunction with effective marketing automation tools can make the process easier.
24. Personalized Marketing
Personalized marketing is when a company uses what they know about you to make your interactions with them feel personal. And if you belong to the ISFJ personality type, they may tailor their approach to emphasize reliability, trust, and detailed information, aligning with your preferences.
For example, they might use your name in an email or suggest products you might like based on what you’ve bought before. It might sound a bit intrusive, but as long as it makes their shopping experience better, people are fine with it.
25. Brand Marketing
Unlike other marketing techniques that aim to boost sales, brand marketing is all about crafting how the public sees your brand and building an emotional bond with your desired audience.
Brand marketing aims to draw in more of your target audience by connecting with their beliefs and molding a brand that directly connects with them.
In a nutshell, it’s about promoting your brand itself, not just the products or services you offer.
26. Stealth Marketing
Stealth marketing, also called undercover marketing, is when brands promote their products or services without people realizing they’re being marketed to.
For instance, TV commercials sometimes show ads for things you might not need. In online forums, you might see marketers talking about products just to get people talking about them.
This approach aims to spark interest in a product or brand rather than making instant sales.
27. Guerilla Marketing
Guerilla marketing is a form of marketing where most strategies are offline. It uses imaginative and unconventional techniques to boost sales, generate excitement for your marketing efforts, and enhance brand visibility.
It can be a budget-friendly way to get a lot of attention, but it demands a lot of effort and precise planning. If you’re up for it, this creative and distinctive approach can really generate gossip for your brand.
28. Partner Marketing
Partner marketing, or co-marketing, is a type of marketing where two companies work collaboratively. These two companies partner on marketing campaigns to share a single combined message.
The common idea of this technique is to sponsor one brand’s product or services at the other brand. It works as a lead generation tool where brands can reach the audience they have yet to connect with.
For example, PayPal can offer their app to Samsung to be pre-installed on their device and reach a wider audience.
29. Product Marketing
Product marketing goes beyond photos and campaigns. It’s about creating interest in a product and getting people to use it by presenting it well, crafting the right message, and studying the market.
A company’s product marketers are the bridge between product, sales, marketing, and customer success teams. They collaborate with all these teams to help sales and ensure marketing plans are coordinated. Plus, product marketers. Additionally, product marketers can leverage product prioritization software to streamline decision-making and optimize product development strategies.
30. Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing means tailoring marketing to specific accounts. This type requires immense focus and a strong strategy where companies see one potential customer as a unique market.
Instead of aiming at a whole industry, marketing teams make content, events, and campaigns just for those linked to that account. This way, brands can create special campaigns for their best customers and focus on prospects showing strong interest.
31. User-Generated Marketing
User-generated marketing is a way to get your audience to make marketing content for your brand. They can create videos, social media stories, hashtags, and more.
For example, Oreo ran a contest where people could suggest new cookie flavors to win a big cash prize.
Eventually, it can help you connect with your audience without spending much money and let more people know about your brand.
32. Demand Generation Marketing
Demand generation marketing is about increasing awareness of what you are offering to an audience. This can be done through marketing, public relations, newsletters, and social media platforms.
This strategy aims to establish brand expertise and build trust with customers, ultimately fostering long-term interest and establishing connections.
33. Customer Marketing
Customer marketing is the process wherein you can promote your product or service to people who are already your customers instead of getting new ones. The goal is to provide value to your current customers by making them happy with what you offer, who can advocate for your brand in return.
34. Relationship Marketing
Relationship marketing is a type where you have to build solid and meaningful connections with customers to ensure they stay loyal to your brand for a long time.
By leveraging this strategy, you can create lasting customer loyalty by engaging them through various marketing efforts, which in return will increase your revenue.
Clothing brand H&M is a great example of this. They run recycling campaigns where customers can donate clothes to get discounts, and customers keep returning to them to avail of the benefits.
35. Campus Marketing
Have you ever had people visit your school campus to market their products? If yes, then you’ve seen campus marketing. Campus marketing works by reaching students at their college or university.
You promote products or services to these students, often using brand ambassadors. These types of marketers can be seen setting up booths at events, hosting their own activities, and giving away freebies to create awareness.
36. Event Marketing
Event marketing is a marketing strategy that is all about organizing and hosting events to promote a product or service. These events can be conferences, live talks, Q&A sessions, seminars, or different activities designed to boost brand visibility and sales.
To have a successful event marketing session, you need to plan how to promote the event, create exciting content to build the hype and choose the best ways to spread the word. Additionally, you can enhance your event by using an event invitation templates tool to create attractive and professional invitation cards, making it easier to invite and engage your audience effectively. This personalized approach ensures that your audience feels personally invited and engaged.
For example, when you see charity foundations reaching out to people at events, that’s a form of event marketing.
37. Experiential Marketing
The next marketing type we have is experiential marketing, also known as engagement marketing. This involves deeply connecting with customers with a product or service by building strong emotional connections between a brand and its audience. This can happen online or in person, through live events or personalized apps.
For instance, some social shopping and online e-commerce sites now offer augmented reality (AR) features that allow people to virtually try on products before purchasing.
Lenskart is an apt example for this, where it allows customers to try on eyewear online before buying.
38. Local Marketing
Local marketing is highly popular among offline business owners, but online business owners also use it. It’s a strategy that uses a customer’s location to show a relevant product or service.
If you have a local business, you can profit highly from it by targeting the people locally.
By advertising your business more locally, you can show that you know what the people there like and need.
39. Global Marketing
Unlike local marketing, global marketing is a technique where you try to reach people all around the world. For this, you need to do a lot of market research to determine where your product or service will be liked and how to advertise it to achieve your business goals. This is when data scraping and using Python comes in handy, as it allows you to gather large volumes of relevant data from various sources quickly and efficiently despite potential challenges, including a Python requests timeout that can happen due to network instability or server limitations.
For example, if you run a clothing business in the US and want to sell to people in Russia, you’d need to consider the weather in Russia. You can expand your audience by offering clothing options that fit the Russian style and climate.
40. Multicultural Marketing
This type of marketing understands a specific market’s racial and cultural differences and then promotes the brand. It mainly targets minority groups to build an understanding relationship with potential customers and increase their reach.
Example, Fenty Beauty by Rihanna swears by their tagline “Beauty for All” and has introduced more than 50 shades of foundation for all skin colors.
41. Emotional Marketing
While marketing plays its own part, multiple research has shown that emotions have a stronger impact on how people make choices.
And, as a marketer, you must consider not just the product but also how you want your audience to feel when they use it. This is what emotional marketing is all about.
Emotional marketing is about forming an emotional connection with your audience.
Nike’s plus-size collection promotes body positivity among its customers and connects with them on an emotional level.
42. Informative Marketing
Informative marketing is the complete opposite of emotional marketing. It mainly emphasizes factual information rather than emotions. It highlights product features, benefits, and competitive advantages to address customer needs.
For example, a mobile company may use informative marketing to showcase technical specs and show how its product is better than its competitors.
43. Neuromarketing
Neuromarketing uses science to understand how marketing affects what’s happening in a customer’s brain, such as what they’re thinking and feeling. Through this, you have to study your customers’ minds through their eyes, brains, and reactions after seeing your products.
This information lets you quickly determine if your targeted customer likes your product. This will eventually help you create better ads and build a brand that’s more appealing to people.
44. Nostalgia Marketing
Nostalgia marketing is about using the nostalgic feeling people feel for the past and using that feeling to promote your brand. You do this by adding things in your ads that remind people of their happy old memories.
Let’s say, if Nestle’s Butterfinger candy makes a comeback, people who remember it will likely be drawn to it.
To use this strategy effectively, you must ensure that the campaigns you create have some old references that bring back memories and make people feel nostalgic by seeing your brand.
45. Organic Marketing
Organic marketing is the strategy where you draw people to your business without paying for advertising. It relies on using effective techniques to make search engines and social media platforms naturally display your content.
This is in contrast to paid methods, like sponsored links or boosted posts, and depends heavily on the quality of your SEO to ensure your business appears in search results.
46. Seasonal Marketing
You may have noticed products associated with specific festivals or events, like Valentine’s Day products in red or heart shapes or spooky items during Halloween. This type of marketing is called seasonal or holiday marketing, where products are promoted during particular times of the year to align with these events.
The important thing to be noted here is each campaign varies depending on the season or occasion.
47. Cause Marketing
Cause marketing involves brands associating themselves with social causes while promoting their products. For example, a brand might promise to donate to a specific charity when you make a purchase.
Like, when you buy a red color iPhone, a specific part of the amount is donated.
This approach can lead to long-term business growth by building stronger brand loyalty and creating a distinct competitive edge.
48. Controversial Marketing
Controversial marketing involves using controversial subjects to draw attention to marketing campaigns. Its goal is not to divide audiences but to capture their interest and initiate discussions.
This type of marketing can make your content popular and get people talking about your brand. But it can also make some people dislike your brand and harm its reputation, so you must be careful when using it.
49. Field Marketing
Field marketing refers to a traditional way of marketing where marketers go out to connect with their prospective customer base on a personal level. This can be through making a speech at a conference, giving out promotional info at an event, or organizing on-site demos of a product.
50. Advertising
Advertising is a part of marketing where you promote your brand and what you offer. You can use this method for online marketing through PPC or social media ads and offline marketing through flyers, billboards, radio, etc.
Since there’s so much competition, you can use Google Ads or Facebook Ads as per your business needs to run AI-driven campaigns to make things easier.
Which Marketing Type To Go For?
We have discussed some of the most used and best marketing techniques. But it all depends on your business needs and goals about which is the best for you. You need to check your budget and the target audience to choose the right marketing technique to benefit your business.
FAQ
Which are the two majorly used marketing types?
While there are many different marketing strategies, they are usually classified under two categories: traditional marketing and digital marketing.
What are the types of marketing I can use for my small business?
You can go for email and social media marketing if you have a small business. Additionally, using traditional marketing along with experiential marketing can give you added benefits.
Which type of digital marketing is considered the best?
The most profitable type of digital marketing are content marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, search engine marketing and organic marketing.
