TIO Markets

HELEN ASTANIOU

Chief Marketing Officer at TIO Markets

You think you know what marketing is? 3 Misconceptions addressed.

When I’m asked by people who don’t know me, what do I do for a living, I tend to default to the easiest answer and use a word that everybody kind of, sort of understands. Regardless of which language I am speaking at the time and irrespective of which country I’m in, I’ll always answer using the English word. Kamno marketing. Faccio marketing. I’m in marketing. Not wanting to dull the conversation with the ins and outs of what that actually looks like on a day-to-day basis, I leave it at that. I’m pretty sure nobody actually really wants greater depth on the issue, but there is a part of me that really wants to elaborate on the excitement and the challenge of that world.

So this article is my opportunity to release all that unspoken and unsaid verbal content about what marketing really is. You think you know what marketing really is? Keep reading and let’s see if that’s true.

Misconception #1. Marketing is purely creative

False. Marketing in today’s world is increasingly data driven. A successful marketer in today’s digital world must have access to the kind of data that will help them to understand the effectiveness of any given campaign. Your data for instance might show that a specific campaign or platform or medium is not achieving its objective. The only way to spend valuable marketing funds efficiently, is to analyse, respond and act on the data you have. This way your budget will reach much, much further, and your chances of exceeding your targets are maximised. To put things in perspective, my marketing team consists of coders, number crunchers and project managers, as well as the super-creative talent-set. Together, they work to disseminate and translate the emotion of our brand into a digital world . This is not to say of course that the creative element is not important.The aesthetics of a brand are of course king when it comes to sell-ability. But if your brand message isn’t in the right place at the right time - your data can provide answers to these questions - then you may as well throw your budget into the wind.

Misconception #2. Marketing campaigns provide a false spin on the product or service that they are promoting.

Be honest. You’ve heard the word ‘marketing’ being used in a derogatory way. Several times, I’m sure. That’s because there is no doubt that the design and presentation of a specific product or service can provide an abundantly greater emotion than the actual core product it represents. The example that first enters my mind is Coconut Water. Farming communities in Eastern Asia have been drinking coconut water since time began. To sell this to Western consumer profiles, the water needs to be shoved in a tin or carton, a funky logo printed on the front and the price grossly inflated to give the feeling of exclusiveness. Whilst simplistically summarised for this example, in short, that’s the power of marketing. In forex it’s a different story. The CFD instrument on one MT4 platform to another,cannot be drastically repackaged from one broker to the next. What can be marketed differently however - and with great degrees of differentiation - is the company ethic that the specific broker conveys. One broker for instance may be pushing hard its no-deposit bonuses or its trading competitions, compared to another broker which might focus on messaging of reliability or the importance of financial education and risk-avoidance. Without wanting to place an overt advert to the company in which I personally work, we would never, ever aim to provide false marketing - and not least because it will get us into hot water with the financial regulator. But because it’s against our company ethic.

Misconception #3. The bigger the budget, the bigger the splash.

No. And yes. But mainly no. Whilst budget is indisputably important, all the budget in the world couldn’t get you in the top spaces organically on google if your website didn’t rank well for SEO. With such a huge volume of unpaid marketing activities that can help your brand to spread like wildfire, there is no end to the list. Social content, video blog content and backlinks to name but a few. Think for yourself - are you more convinced of the trustability of a specific product by a paid ad, or by word-ofmouth? Obviously the paid ad comes from a budget allocation, whereas the word-of-mouth is free. The - possibly - sad truth of the matter though, is that this ‘word-of-mouth’ example I’ve used, is also most likely the result of a concerted marketing effort. So, asking a marketer what kind of budgets they work with is absolutely no reflection on the kind of reach and impact that this marketer has the potential to achieve.

Helen Astaniou Chief Marketing Officer at TIO Markets So, there we have it. You can’t put money on the kind of catharsis that comes from setting the record straight. Hopefully at the very least, the next time you bump into a marketer at a social gathering, you can give them an all-knowing ‘aaahhh’ and a respectful nod. Thank you for reading!