Marketing is all around us in the everyday modern world, and it shapes and influences almost every decision you make. From choosing where to live, what you decide to wear, and what you have for lunch, there are countless efforts made by the businesses around you to convince you to choose them.
Having a clear idea of how marketing has an impact on your life can help you cut through the noise, and make better choices that suit your needs. Read on to find out the ways that marketing plays a role in your daily life, and how you can use this to your advantage.
It will shape the trends you see around you
You might have noticed that there are trends in almost everything, from the fashion world, to food, home design, music and much more. Every season seems to bring in a new trend that rises in popularity, pushing previous trends to the sidelines and replacing everything anew.
Trends do not just appear out of nowhere, but in fact, the trends that you see being advertised around you are a result of extensive research from brands, looking at both emerging ideas and preferences in their field, and up to date marketing efforts. Many big brands will carry out trend forecasts, taking on the advice of experts whose role is to look at current and past behavioral patterns in the industry, and anticipate what might be ahead. This will often take in various sources of information, such as current social patterns and changes, historical trend patterns, and the mood of customers in the present moment. Savvy marketing departments will then be able to use this information to shape future trends effectively, making them feel enticing and alluring to you, the customer. Of course, not everyone is keen to follow the latest trends in life. However, it’s much harder to avoid them than you might think, as it will shape everything from the kind of advertising you see around you, to the products that are available.
It will persuade you to make a choice
Another important role of marketing is to influence the kind of purchasing choices you make. That doesn’t mean, however, that marketing is designed to make you try to select something you would ordinarily not want. Instead, clever marketing is designed to target specific audiences that will already be in line with the values of the particular brand, and may already be interested and inclined towards them.
If you’re trying to make a choice between competing products and do not know which to go for, a large part of your decision-making process will be shaped by how their respective marketing efforts present their benefits. Next time you make a major purchasing decision, pause and take a moment to consider what it is about the product or service that is encouraging you to buy it, and how much of that might come from the messaging behind the brand’s marketing.
It will anticipate your needs
If you’ve ever seen a pop up advert appear on your browser soon after you’ve been carrying out similar searches online, then you’ll know the feeling that it can seem like brands’ marketing teams know just what you want, even before you might. This is the result of careful and thorough analytic data research by marketers, where they will look closely at the analytic information from website visitors, customer behavior, and other types of patterns, to predict what next steps are needed. If you’re curious, you can read more about the role and importance of analytics here.
It can also be helpful to have a clear idea of how your information is collected and used, and knowing when you can choose to opt out, or in. When signing up email accounts to a website or online store, there will often be an option where you can select to receive marketing information, or not. Other websites will often alert you to your options in preferences about how they may use your browsing data. Making an active and educated decision about these things can help you retain more control over how marketing shapes your purchasing decisions.
It might make it difficult to know what to pick
Sometimes it can be tough to know who to trust when researching for a new purchase. There can be a plethora of glossy commercials, stylish websites and witty taglines out there, all designed to convince you that they are the best choice for you. However, if you’ve found yourself stuck between different options, a useful step to take is to look through customer reviews.
Customer reviews can be a useful and trustworthy source of information, as hopefully, real-life customers will be providing their insight and experiences of their own purchases. A brand that values its customers will encourage reviews, often making the process easier by providing templates and clear structure that allow you to submit a variety of information. This can show you more clearly how a product may or may not suit your needs, and help you make a more reliable choice.
It will set a standard of expectations
Marketing has often been on the receiving end of criticism for setting unreasonably high expectations in life. Advertising campaigns for fashion or beauty may set an expected standard of physical appearance that may be unrealistic or impossible to achieve, while other marketing efforts can create a version of life that does not truly tally with most people’s daily experiences.
Thankfully there has been increased awareness of the potentially negative impact on people’s expectations from marketing, and brands are now encouraged to strike a better balance between creating an aspirational campaign to persuade customers, and creating a fair representation of the product or service. This has been seen in a variety of different ways, from calls to include more diverse types of models in photographic campaigns to reflect the diversity of the real world, to reducing the use of photo-editing to reflect actual products.
