What Does Marketing Do? 

The marketing industry has one primary objective: to serve as a critical bridge between a company’s offerings and its target audience. 

In other words, the purpose of marketing is to identify and connect the right products or services with the right customers.

The role of marketing includes (but isn’t limited to) determining the best ways for a company to reach its target audience—by writing effective ad copy, creating imagery and videos, and liaising with influencers.

A brand’s marketing department guides people through the stages of the marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty. 

The funnel helps marketers understand their target audience’s needs better at each stage. 

Further reading: The Marketing Funnel: What It Is & How It Works

Marketing plays an important part in turning your prospects into buyers (conversion). And later, in engaging and retaining those customers once they’ve made a purchase (loyalty). Which can include creating product guides or sending customer newsletters.

Marketing is also responsible for organizing affiliate schemes. Where loyal customers earn a commission by sharing their **** for your product with their audience, further growing your brand’s reach.

Marketing comes in two forms: traditional (offline) and digital marketing.

Traditional marketing includes things like TV ads and print media.

Digital marketing includes social media, blog posts, podcasts, and videos. It often has a lower barrier to entry because you don’t need a huge list or budget to get started. 

So, for the purposes of this article, that’s where we’ll focus.

Let’s start by looking at the pet food brand Purina.

Say you’re a marketer for the brand. Your goal: to target pet owners who prioritize high-quality animal nutrition.

Marketing tactics like Purina’s active presence on Instagram bring your brand closer to quality-conscious pet enthusiasts.

You curate posts showing real pets thriving on your products, share pet care tips, and partner with pet influencers.

This way, you showcase the tangible benefits of Purina’s offerings. While building a community of loyal customers who believe in your brand’s commitment to pet well-being.

Marketing is a critical arm for any business. It helps you find and engage with the people who’ll buy and enjoy your product. And who’ll sustain your long-term success.

What Does Marketing Do for Businesses?

Marketing is the Swiss Army knife of the business world. Meaning it has a lot of functions.

Here are some ways it can help:

Build Brand Awareness

Marketing shines a spotlight on your business. So you stand out in a crowded market and become recognizable to consumers.

Brand awareness is the first step in the customer journey. Research by Adobe shows that 71% of customers will buy more from brands they trust.

Take Nike as an example. Who doesn’t remember its tagline “Just Do It”?

It wasn’t just about selling sneakers.

The goal was to inspire people to embrace physical fitness. And those three simple words became synonymous with the brand.

Nike didn’t stop there. 

Let’s not forget its use of celebrity endorsements like Michael Jordan’s. When well-known, respected people back your brand, it builds a connection with your audience.

These brand awareness tactics catapulted a brand like Nike into a household name.

Nike is now everywhere—on billboards, TV ads, and your friend’s T-shirt.

The role of marketing is to keep your brand top-of-mind. And boost sales in the process.

Improve Customer Retention and Loyalty

Marketing doesn’t just bring new customers through your door. It also keeps them coming back for more.

Our research shows that existing customers are 50% more likely to try a new product by a brand they’ve already purchased from.

That’s not all. There’s a 60 to 70% chance of selling to an existing customer.

Customer retention is crucial. And few brands leverage marketing to keep their customer base loyal as well as Sephora.

Ever heard of its Beauty Insider program? It’s like the VIP club of the makeup world.

Each dollar customers spend earns them points. Which they can redeem for things like discounts on their next shop.

There’s more. They also offer free beauty classes and first dibs on new products.

It’s not just about selling you more lipstick, but about creating an experience around the brand. And it works.

The program’s 31 million+ members aren’t just shopping. They’re engaging, learning, and becoming diehard fans. 

Sephora’s marketing strategy has helped it build a community around its brand. Strengthening word-of-mouth so customers are more likely to return again and again.

Provide a Competitive Advantage

Savvy marketing sets businesses apart from rivals in crowded marketplaces. It helps them capture a market share and create positive experiences.

Let’s talk Apple. It knows how to sell a vision.

When customers buy an Apple product, they’re not just buying a piece of hardware. They’re buying into an ecosystem, a lifestyle, and a community.

Apple’s product launches create buzz not just for tech enthusiasts. But for the general public, too.

Its events turn ordinary product announcements into must-see spectacles.

Apple’s distinct branding and marketing savvy, paired with its commitment to quality and design, gives it a competitive edge and industry leader status. Solidifying its position as an industry leader and making competitors play catch-up.

Give Measurable Outcomes

Measurable outcomes are quantifiable results that allow you to gauge how well your actions and efforts work. Like how many people visit your website. Or how many of those visitors become customers.

Such outcomes also apply to marketing.

Being able to measure how successful a marketing campaign is means you can make data-driven decisions, optimize your strategies, and get the most return on your investment (ROI).

Take the work of Altered State Productions, a US-based marketing and media production company, for Valyōu Furniture.

In 2021, Altered State Productions helped Valyōu Furniture increase its organic SEO presence by an average of 40%+. And its domain authority by 8 points.

No guesswork, just straight-up facts that indicate its SEO strategy efforts worked.

What Tasks Do Marketers Carry Out?

Marketers promote a business’s products or services through various activities. Like planning brand awareness ad campaigns and writing blog posts to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Day-to-day marketing also involves a lot of research and data analysis. Which ensures the right messages reach the right people with optimal budget spending.

Plus, marketing team roles and responsibilities are diverse and vary widely across different departments, businesses, and industries. 

So, what exactly do marketers do all day? Let’s dig in.

Create Content

Content creation can take the form of blog posts, video marketing, podcasts, and images. The goal here being to attract and engage audiences.

Content marketing serves many purposes for brands. Ultimately, it’s about creating awareness and building connections between your brand and the customer.

Posts and podcasts can establish a new or growing brand’s authority. So your customers trust you as an expert when they search for information.

Content can also reinforce your brand values, which have become increasingly important to the majority of customers.

Booking.com’s blog, for instance, features travel articles tailored to different types of travelers, from solo adventurers to family vacationers. The type of content it publishes reinforces its values, such as traveling respectfully and safely.

What key roles does marketing play when it comes to content creation? 

Marketers first identify the target audience’s interests and preferences. Then coordinate with content creators to produce articles, podcasts, videos, and imagery that resonate.

They also strategize the best distribution channels and promotion methods to ensure the content reaches, engages, and potentially converts its intended audience.

How do they do it?

Creating marketing content isn’t just about throwing together a blog post or a video. It’s a strategic process backed by research and aided by some super-smart tools.

To ensure successful customer engagement, marketers often turn to tools that help them understand what people search for. 

Keyword research tools—including those in Semrush’s toolkit—provide valuable insights into your audience’s interests.

Another useful tool here is the Topic Research tool for idea generation.

Every “card” in this report represents a subtopic and presents headlines from the most popular web content related to it.

Topic Research extracts ideas from other websites that use the keyword or topic searched for. Marketers can filter them to build a content marketing strategy.

Simply expand each card to find things like related questions or top headlines.

Following content creation, tools like content management systems, video editing software, and social media schedulers help keep everything running smoothly.

Further reading: Content Creation: What It Is & How to Do It in 2023 [Tips + Tools]

Conduct Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis involves sizing up the competition to see what you’re doing right—and what you could do better. Marketers assess trends, figure out which strategies work for others, and optimize on any gaps in their approach.

Knowing the competition’s strengths and weaknesses provides you with a roadmap to make smarter business decisions.

Say your product is a fitness app, and you learn that a top-performing competitor receives a lot of negative feedback on their tool’s learning curve. Users find it hard to navigate and can’t easily change from metric to imperial measurements to see how far they’ve run.

Use these insights in your marketing campaigns to emphasize your product’s user-friendliness and intuitive design.

Or even offer additional training resources or tutorials. You’ll gain a competitive advantage by being more accessible and customer-centric.

This is where tools like Keyword Gap come into play.

Keyword Gap offers a side-by-side comparison of your keyword profile with those of up to four competitors.

Enter the domain names to get a quick overview of the shared keywords and where they rank under “Keyword Overlap.”

Here’s how Expedia fares with its top travel competitors:

The “Missing” tab under “Top Opportunities” shows keywords on competitors’ websites that don’t feature on Expedia. Highlighting unexplored content ideas to consider next.

“Weak” opportunities identify the keywords Expedia content ranks lower for. A clear indicator of what content needs further optimization to outrank the competition.

If you’re a marketer at Expedia, the above competitor research and findings could give your content creation and optimization strategies a clear direction geared towards success.

Further reading: What Is a Competitor Analysis & How to Do It (with Template)

Analyze Performance Metrics

Performance metrics are quantifiable measurements that help marketers judge how well their activities work to meet business goals. Some examples include website traffic, bounce rates, conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI).

Marketing pros use analytics tools to assess campaign performance. Which helps them make informed decisions and fine-tune their strategies.

Popular analytics tools include Google Analytics, HubSpot’s CRM, and Adobe Analytics.

While these tools are key for tracking your site’s performance, Semrush’s Traffic Analytics can reveal your website’s strengths and weaknesses through competitive research.

For example, you can analyze your competitors’ traffic sources to see if there’s a channel you’re missing out on. Once you’ve identified the channels to tap into, create an action plan. You can then set any results obtained from these actions as your performance metrics.

The above chart compares results for Sprout Social, Buffer, and CoSchedule. All three get their main website footfall via direct links and appearances in search engine results.

If you operate in the same space, you could use this data to identify which channels to double down on.

Further reading: How to Check Website Traffic (+ Increase It)

Plus, the tool’s insights on traffic journeys also indicate user behavior patterns.

You can see where audiences for these three websites come from and where they go next.

Analyze these patterns to better target your market, look for new places to focus efforts, and optimize campaign elements for greater ROI.

The data also helps your marketing team identify growth opportunities and potential partnerships and sponsorships.

For example, Google appears to be a popular next location for visitors of the three websites above. Indicating that users may not be getting answers to their questions on said sites. 

Which implies there may be informational content opportunities, like FAQs, clearer headings, and blog content. 

Conduct Market Research

Market research involves collecting and analyzing data on a specific market—like consumer behavior. It guides activities like product development and narrows down potential marketing strategies.

Let’s go back to the fitness app scenario we discussed in the Competitive Analysis section. 

Market research might show that the target audience wants more data on workout intensity. Like a heart rate monitor.

The research can then inform where this data should show up on the app. It may also inspire new product initiatives, such as an aerobic vs. anaerobic heart rate bar. 

Market research also tells the marketing department and sales team what to focus on when communicating with customers.

How do marketers do their research? Following these three steps:

1. Identify the target audience 
2. Collect data through surveys, interviews, tools, or observations 
3. And then analyze it

Market Explorer helps with this process. By reporting on competitors’ traffic generation strategies, audiences, and keywords.

Marketers can use this data to benchmark what success looks like for their business.

The tool also provides a lot of useful information about any audience.

Here’s an example of what the Market Explorer Audience Report says about the audience in Nike’s market:

The granular audience insights identify key demographics, socioeconomic status, and user behaviors and preferences. So you can create more targeted—and more effective—marketing strategies.

What Are the Four Ps of Marketing?

Product, Price, Place, and Promotion help businesses make more focused decisions that resonate with their target audience. To drive engagement, sales, and growth.

Let’s break these four marketing pillars down.

Product

Product refers to the actual goods, services, or experiences businesses offer consumers. 

A company’s products aren’t just tangible items or services. They’re solutions to a customer’s problem or a way to fulfill a specific need.

The marketing team’s roles and responsibilities here involve understanding what customers want and need from a product or service. 

That information then informs how they market the product. And may also impact future product features that consumers want.

Here’s a prime product example:

HubSpot positions itself as an all-in-one platform solution for marketing, sales, and customer service needs. It helps businesses manage customer relationships and grow their brands with ease by offering products and tools that streamline these processes.

When creating products, businesses need to look out for:

• Relevance: Ensure the product aligns with current customer needs and desires
• Usability: Check that it’s user-friendly and serves its intended purpose effectively
• Quality: Ensure it meets or exceeds industry standards and customer expectations
• Differentiation: Offer a unique value proposition that sets them apart from competitors
• Adaptability: Evolve the product based on feedback and changing market conditions

Price

Pricing strategy determines where the product is positioned in the market. In most cases, the marketing team determines the price by weighing up a product’s actual and perceived values. 

The actual value accounts for costs, competitor prices, and more. The perceived value is what customers are willing to pay for the product.

For example, Counterpoint’s materials analysis indicates the iPhone 14 costs around $464 to make, but it retails at $1,099 because customers are willing to pay more for the brand. 

Why does this matter so much? 

Simple. Price could seriously influence a consumer’s decision-making process.

HubSpot offers different pricing plans for its products. Prices also vary based on client team size.

For example, here’s the pricing plan of the starter version of its Marketing Hub:

Note how the monthly price is lower if customers subscribe to an annual plan. This is an example of a pricing strategy.

HubSpot offers lower monthly rates for annual subscriptions to entice long-term commitments. It locks in revenue and cultivates customer loyalty.

Marketers’ research will help determine what pricing strategies will resonate the most with your target audience. Which may change over time.

Different pricing strategies can wield different outcomes. Some examples include:

• Discount pricing: Offering products at a lower price for a limited time. Which can boost short-term sales and attract cost-sensitive consumers.
• Premium pricing: Setting a higher price can create the perception of superior quality and exclusivity

Important: Pricing is not a “set it and forget it” thing. It needs regular revisiting and tweaking to align with your business goals and market trends and dynamics.

Place

Place refers to where and how a product is made available to consumers.

Your choice of distribution channels—whether online, in physical stores, or a combination—plays a big role in how accessible and visible your product is to your target audience. 

Marketers must research which channels the company should spend time on. They’re also responsible for creating content that’s appropriate for each place. Be it a poster for an in-person launch event or a Reel to promote an upcoming live video launch.

HubSpot primarily uses an online distribution model. Its website and app store make its suite of tools available globally.

Why did it opt for an online place?

An online channel enables HubSpot to reach a wide audience without the overheads associated with physical stores. It also complements the nature of its product, being digital and cloud-based.

Some factors marketers need to consider when deciding on appropriate distribution channels are:

• Audience accessibility: Where does the target audience look for similar products or services?
• Cost-effectiveness: What are the benefits vs. the costs for each channel?
• Speed to market: How quickly can the company get the product in front of consumers? Online channels may allow for quicker launches. Physical distribution could take longer, but it offers the advantage of a tactile customer experience. 

Ultimately, the right place ensures that your product reaches the right audience.

Promotion

Promotion includes how a business communicates with its audience to increase awareness, interest, and sales of its products or services.

Even the best product won’t sell if people don’t know about it or understand its value.

Factors to keep in mind when choosing promotional strategies include:

• Target audience: Different channels resonate with different age groups, interests, and behaviors
• Product type: Some products are better for specific channels. Think Instagram for visually appealing items, or LinkedIn for B2B services.
• Budget: Some channels require more financial investment than others
• Goals: Are you aiming for brand awareness, customer engagement, or direct sales? Your objectives will guide your choice of channels.
• Geographical reach: If your market is local, community-based channels might work best. For a global audience, online and social media channels are key.

HubSpot uses a variety of channels for promotion, including content marketing, social media, and targeted advertising.

These work together to communicate the benefits of its all-in-one platform to all prospective customers.

Choosing the right promotional tactics can increase your customer engagement, conversion, and ROI.

Types of Marketing Strategies

A marketing strategy involves the steps a company takes to tell the world about its business, product, or service. 

It’s a long-term plan that includes who your customers are. How you intend to get in front of them. And even how much budget you’ll need to assist your marketing strategy.

Businesses use marketing strategies to promote their products to their chosen target audiences. The core goals of any marketing plan are to engage potential customers, turn them into loyal fans, increase revenue, and drive business growth.

Below are some strategies marketers might use to suit their purposes. We’ll outline their main functions and applications, together with examples of success stories. So you can draw inspiration for your own marketing needs.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a strategic approach where you focus on creating and distributing valuable content to attract and engage your audience. Ultimately delivering on business goals.

Content marketing’s focus is inbound marketing—which works like this: 

• Provide helpful content that answers common customer questions
• People find your business through that content, then become customers
• As customers find the business themselves, they are classed as inbound leads

One company that nails its inbound marketing strategy is Sprout Social. The social media management platform experiments with multiple content types.

First, Sprout’s blog offers a treasure trove of articles.

They delve deep into social media marketing and provide actionable tips and insights. Continuously sharing valuable information turns SproutSocial into an industry expert.

The company also hosts webinars that tackle current challenges and opportunities in social media marketing.

Which serve as an educational platform for marketing professionals.

Plus, its podcast “Social Creatures” goes a step further to explore the human side of social media marketing.

Sprout’s high-quality podcast content is like a magnet for traffic. And more traffic equals more leads.

Lastly, Sprout Social publishes comprehensive data reports that provide valuable industry trends and benchmarks.

Such content builds authority and turns casual visitors into brand loyalists.

Sprout knows its audience personas and creates content exactly for them. This targeted approach improves how high its content ranks in search engines because it answers what people want to know. Helping its content—and therefore the brand—reach more consumers and drive profitability.

A mix of content types (including others like social posts, ebooks, and newsletters) helps Sprout Social build topical authority. Strategically positioning it as the industry leader. 

As in the case of Sprout Social, the benefits of a varied content strategy can be manifold for any business.

Further reading: What Is Content Marketing? Definition, Importance, & Strategy Tips

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to promote your product or service, build brand awareness, and engage with your audience. 

It’s about you connecting with people where they’re most comfortable—on their native social channels.

Take Ryanair.

The airline has built an omnichannel social strategy and meets customers wherever they hang out online. All its channels are linked, creating a unified user experience.

It’s present on Facebook, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram.

But what makes Ryanair different?

Its humor.

Ryanair isn’t just dishing out flight updates—it’s making people laugh. Like in this TikTok:

Humor creates an emotional connection and builds customer engagement. In a survey, 72% of people said they would choose a brand that employs humor over its competition.

The survey also showed that 91% of people prefer brands to be funny. Humor is a way to make content more memorable and increase its chances of going viral.

Viral content increases visibility, which usually leads to high engagement. The cycle helps the brand resonate with a broader audience.

If done right—like Ryanair—your social media marketing can drive engagement, brand loyalty, and even a few laughs.

Further reading: All Eyes on You! A Guide to Growing Your Social Media Visibility

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO involves creating the right online content to increase your chances of appearing in search engine results for relevant queries.

SEO typically involves:

• Keyword research: Discover the terms and phrases your target audience uses when looking for information online. To help you tailor your content to their search intent and needs.
• Link building: Attract high-quality inbound links from external websites to yours. You’ll improve your site’s topical authority.
• On-page SEO: Fine-tune your on-page SEO to provide better user experience (UX). This in turn can improve your content’s rankings in organic search. Common practices include optimizing for search intent, using title tags that include keywords, and including internal links to related content.
• Mobile SEO: Create a smooth, user-friendly experience on smartphones and tablets. Search engines crawl the mobile versions of websites first, so apply best practices with mobile in mind across your site’s design and content. 
• Technical SEO: Tweak the architecture and underlying structure of the site to make it more accessible and understandable to search engines. The easier it is for search engines to navigate your site, the more likely they’ll be to recommend your content to users searching for relevant information.

SEO is critical for two main reasons.

First, higher search engine rankings mean more online visibility for your website. Which can pull in more traffic.

Second, quality SEO incorporates good user UX and usability, which search engines reward. Building trust and credibility for your brand as a result.

Further reading: SEO Best Practices: 10 Ways to Boost Organic Rankings & Traffic

The start of any effective SEO strategy is keyword research. That’s where Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool comes into play.

The tool provides you with a comprehensive list of keyword suggestions relevant to your topic. Along with vital metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, and more.

Use this information to create a data-driven SEO strategy that aligns with your target audience’s search behavior.

Your efforts will enhance your website’s visibility, help you market to the right people, and potentially attract more qualified leads your way.

Email Marketing

Email marketing lets you build relationships with customers and encourage them to act.

It’s one of the most direct forms of communication. Offering you a chance to talk straight to your audience.

Plus, the ROI is often sky-high—with every $1 spent on email marketing yielding an average $36 return.

Check out this email from Barnes and Noble:

First off, the email is well formatted.

The information flows logically. The use of green and white balances aesthetics with readability. A combination that makes the message both attractive and easy to digest.

The subject line “Limited Time Special Offer” creates a sense of urgency. Encouraging the recipient to see what it’s about.

The promotion appears right at the top of the email. “Time is Ticking” plus the “15% off” deal further drive the offer.

On top of that, the email is personalized.

It smartly factors in the customer’s past purchase history to make targeted suggestions.

Why does this work?

Because segmentation and personalization make the recommended products more appealing to the recipient.

Segment and target your email content to reach customers through messages that are most relevant to them. You’re likely to see your engagement and conversion rates rise as a result.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is when brands and individuals with strong social influence collaborate to promote products or services to a wider yet targeted audience.

With this strategy, you leverage the trust that influencers have built among their followers. Trust translates into higher engagement and, often, increased sales.

Here’s the fitness apparel brand Gymshark. It often partners with fitness influencers like Marissa McNamara.

Influencers showcase Gymshark’s products in their workout routines. Their followers get discount codes to make purchases.

Gymshark’s collaborations work well because their influencers fit the brand’s ethos and target audience. So consumers get a seamless, authentic experience.

Finding the right influencer is a challenge for marketers, though. 

This is where platforms like Influencer Analytics come in handy. It helps businesses and brands source YouTube, TikTok, or Twitch influencers by metrics like niche, engagement rate, and follower count.

You may search for them by relevant channel or keyword. As well as obtain data on these influencers’ metrics.

Here’s how to find the right people to market you.

Say you want to promote your product through creators and celebrities on TikTok. Go to “Influencer Discovery” and select “TikTok.”

Click “Filters” in the top-right corner.

Select your preferences for criteria like subscriber count, market category, pricing, and engagement rate.

The platform pulls a list of results based on your filters.

You can see individual influencers’ details and contact info when you click into their profile.

You can also uncover other useful data when reviewing influencer options. Like their channel quality and account activity.

Once you’ve found who you want to work with, save them to a list.

Influencer Analytics streamlines the discovery and vetting process to ensure a perfect match for your brand and marketing goals.

With tools and platforms like this one, influencer marketing becomes a more manageable strategy.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a type of digital marketing where advertisers pay a fee each time someone clicks their ad.

This advertising method provides immediate visibility on SERPs. Visibility that allows businesses to “buy” their way to the top (“Sponsored”) results by bidding on specific keywords.

Marketers have immediate access to their target audience that way. 

For example, the project management tool Monday.com uses PPC. Its website appears at the top of the paid search results for the search term “best project management software.”

People actively seeking such solutions online are more likely to click on the ad and become customers.

With PPC platforms like Google Ads, your business can easily monitor every aspect of your marketing ad campaigns—from click-through rates (CTR) to conversions. All while controlling your budget and closely tracking ROI.

PPC data helps you keep track and make informed decisions, ensuring that every dollar is well spent.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing happens when businesses reward external parties, known as affiliates, for driving sales or traffic to their websites. It’s a commission-based system to help you reach new customers.

An affiliate marketing strategy is powerful because it creates a win-win partnership. 

It extends your brand’s reach and drives targeted traffic and sales. While offering performance-based rewards that make ROI transparent.

A classic example is Amazon’s affiliate program:

Bloggers or website owners can include Amazon product links on their sites. When someone clicks such a link and makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a commission.

Here are some ways your marketing team can squeeze the most value out of affiliation:

• Choose the right partners: Look for affiliates whose audience aligns with your target market to ensure more qualified leads
• Quality over quantity: Choose partnerships that deliver value over having many that are less effective
• Regular tracking and analytics: Use tracking tools to monitor clicks, conversions, and ROI. This data can offer you insights into what works and what needs improvement.
• Optimize landing pages: Ensure the landing pages affiliates direct traffic to are optimized for conversion. So you maximize the value of each click.
• Timely payments and support: Ensure timely commission payments and solid support for affiliates to maintain a good relationship with them

Just like Amazon, you can increase your brand’s reach and revenue with a well-managed and regularly reviewed affiliate marketing program.

Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing mediums include billboards, guerilla marketing, print marketing, television, radio, and other offline methods. 

Traditional marketing strategies are still relevant and effective in today’s digital age. These tried-and-true techniques tend to reach broader audiences. And provide the tangibility and spectacle that digital platforms may sometimes lack.

Take this billboard promoting the Barbie movie:

It’s bright, it’s bold, and even in Times Square it stood out.

Everyone who visited saw this billboard. Regardless of whether they were in the Barbie movie’s target audience or not.

Meaning the campaign had a less targeted reach than many digital marketing techniques. Like the movie’s social platforms or its viral Barbie selfie generator.

But it will have had a huge audience—over 300,000 people walking through Times Square in July 2023 when the movie launched.

A popular and effective twist is to repurpose traditional marketing assets for digital mediums. The benefit? You maximize both reach and engagement. 

Here are some repurposing ideas to inspire your next marketing campaign:

• Take a clever billboard or print ad campaign. Give it a second life by sharing photos on social media channels. Ask followers to share their pictures with a specific hashtag.
• Share behind-the-scenes videos of TV or radio ads on YouTube or Instagram. A fresh, transparent look at the brand can pique interest.
• Use QR codes or augmented reality features in print ads to direct readers to online content. Think videos, digital coupons, or more in-depth product information.

Traditional and digital marketing can work together to create a truly memorable marketing campaign. Resulting in far-reaching benefits for the brand behind it.

Create a Powerful Marketing Strategy with Semrush

Marketing is the backbone of any successful business. It helps you amplify brand awareness and spark meaningful conversations around it. 

Keeping in touch with your customers is highly likely to engage loyal followers, boost your visibility, and in turn, attract new prospects. Letting you accomplish so much more.

Semrush’s suite of tools can support your marketing efforts along the way. So you can plan, run, monitor, and refine your campaigns—all in one place. 

Ready to transform your marketing game? Sign up for a free Semrush account today.