Understanding Marketing Frameworks

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You can think of a marketing framework as the foundation of your marketing strategy. This will help you understand the operations flow of marketing in your company, and applies to organizations at every growth level. Marketing for SMEs and marketing for startups are completely different, however they both utilize a framework to execute marketing operations. The best SME, and the best startup marketing campaigns, are built on a framework that creates: opportunities to improve strategy & communication, global branding, positioning & messaging, and resource needs.

So, what are the marketing framework models?

7Ps of Marketing

This is one of the most widely used frameworks. You can read more from the Oxford College of Marketing, here. The basics for the 7 Ps of marketing are:

Product
Price
Place
Promotion
People
Process
Physical Evidence

STP Marketing

The STP marketing framework is popular because it helps you understand your target audience and how to communicate with them. Expert Program goes in depth on the STP Marketing Model here. To very briefly summarize, STP stands for:

Segmentation
- Demographic
- Geographic
- Psychographic
- Behavioral
Targeting
- Size
- Profitability
- Ease of reach
Positioning
- Functional Positioning
- Symbolic Positioning
- Experiential Positioning

Porter’s Five Forces

Porter’s Five Forces do a fantastic job of focusing on external factors, especially for competitive advantage. With this model, you can really understand how your market functions and how this affects your business. Business New Daily created a great article, written by Marci Martin, which you can find here, for a more in depth look. To briefly summarize, Porter’s Five Forces are:

Supplier Power
Buyer Power
Threat of Substitution
Threat of New Entry
Competitive Rivalry

Pirate Metrics

A Silicon Valley investor developed this framework, and is named after the acronym ‘AARR’. You can read more about it from Product Plan, here. This model focuses on the customer journey:

Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Revenue
Referral

Lean Analytics Stages

The Lean Analytics model is built on five pillars, and focuses on the development of five different stages that every business goes through. For an in depth look at each of these pillars, take a look at this article written by Andrej Shevchenko

Empathy
Stickiness
Virality
Revenue
Scale

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Source: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/lean-analytics/9781449335687/ch20.html

Hook Model

The hook model focuses on habitual behaviors, and uses these as marketers to tap into that cycle. You can read more about it from Product Plan, here.

Trigger
Action
Variable Reward
Investment

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ICE Score

This framework was developed by Sean Ellis, and is an efficient way to assign a value to and prioritize growth opportunities. You can use this model to determine more than marketing opportunities, this can be used for product development and beyond as well. This is done through three parameters:

Impact
Confidence
Ease

You can read more about it from Product Plan, here.

STEPPS

This framework is focused on ‘virality’, and how to gain popularity through social sharing. Pressboard Media has a great in-depth article, but the gist is that there are 6 ‘STEPPS’ to virality:

Social Currency
Triggers
Emotion
Publicity
Practical Value
Stories

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Ask & Answer

Simply enough, this model focuses on gathering feedback from your customer base to answer the question ‘what is my customer asking’. “The Big 5” are concepts that are highlighted, and you can read about them through Impact Plus here. They are:

How much does your solution cost?
What are the negatives or issues with your solution?
How does your product or solution compare to alternatives?
What is everybody saying about your solution?
What is the best solution available?

If you’re looking for marketing strategies for startups pdf or slide deck, or a marketing models pdf - I apologize but you won’t find one here. But, here’s a great article for you to check out from Mailchimp, How to Develop a Startup Marketing Strategy.

7ps Of Marketing

Since the 7ps of marketing is the most popular, and basically essential, framework - we’re going to dive into this in more depth. This model focuses on marketing mix elements, such as place in marketing mix and product in marketing mix. As discussed earlier, there are 7 ‘Ps’ in this marketing mix. However, you can even boil this down further to focus on the marketing framework 4ps. These are Product, Price, Place, Promotion. A 4ps of marketing example should answer what you are selling, how much it costs and the impact that has, where your products are promoted and where they can be found, and how customers find out about you and your product. If you’re a startup or a new entrepreneur, check out this 4ps of marketing pdf from Purdue.

Mckinsey 7s Framework

Something that has not been mentioned yet is the 7s marketing framework mckinsey blessed the world with in the late 1970s. This framework describes and establishes seven factors (that all start with ‘s’) that describe the interrelationship between factors of an organization’s ability to change. These 7 factors are:

Style
Skills
Systems
Structure
Staff
Strategy
Shared Values

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Source: www.mckinsey.com

There are plenty of mckinsey 7s framework pdf, mckinsey 7s framework template, and mckinsey 7s model ppt that you can find online.

Digital Marketing Framework

Now when it comes to digital marketing frameworks, the operational concept is similar but these focus on critical requirements and touchpoints. These touchpoints are very important because it speaks to how you will deliver your marketing messages. The three different digital marketing strategy frameworks we’re going to focus on are RACE, Funnel, and Flywheel. These marketing framework examples will help you understand the process of delivering digital content across a customer journey.

RACE Model

The race planning model focuses on 4 online marketing steps necessary to engage customers at different touchpoints along their journey. These steps are: Reach, Act, Convert, Engage. Reach focuses on the level of awareness and visibility your brand has. Essentially, this answers the question of ‘where’ your customers find you. Act is ‘how’ people interact with your brand. Convert is ‘what’ action they are taking to engage with your brand and becoming paying customers. Engage is focused on building strong relationships that nurture the lifetime value of your customers.

Marketing Funnel

You’ve probably heard about marketing funnels before, so I won’t spend too much time here. Essentially, your marketing funnel is broken down into 5 steps: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty, and Advocacy. Each of these steps is developed to help your strategize and implement the delivery of communications across these 5 levels of engagement. At the ‘top of the funnel’ your audience is becoming aware of their problems and goals. At the consideration stage, they are considering the options to solve their problems and reach their goals. Conversion is where they decide which option they will use to address their problems and achieve their goals. Loyalty and advocacy are bottom of the funnel touchpoints to continue nurturing your customer base, and increase lifetime value.

Flywheel

This model was actually created by Hubspot, and you can read all about it here. This model utilizes inbound methodology to grow your businesses. There are 3 phases to the Flywheel model, they are Attract, Engage, and Delight. This model is showcased in a circle because it focuses on activation of each of these phases to continue delivering a customer-centric experience.

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Source: www.hubspot.com

Pragmatic Marketing Framework

The Pragmatic Marketing Framework is another model, however this specifically focuses on being a marketing management framework. You can find the marketing framework pdf and marketing management pdf from the Pragmatic Institute here. This concept is meant to provide common language across all team and describes the activities required to offer something meaningful to the market, and make money by doing so. This breaks down into many variables, but the basics are as follows: