Marketing is a multifaceted process that operates on three main levels: semantic, communication, and instrumental. This model helps structure the marketing strategy and effectively work on each aspect of product promotion.
The semantic level addresses the core ideas and values of the brand, aiming to create an emotional connection with the audience and emphasize how the product or service can improve customers’ lives. The communication level focuses on selecting channels for interacting with the audience to effectively disseminate the brand’s meanings. It includes advertising, PR, social media, and direct customer communication.
The last one — the instrumental level—covers specific tools and techniques used to implement marketing strategies, such as advertising campaigns, SEO, email marketing, and analytics. The article will discuss the instrumental level and its methods in more detail.
What the Instrumental Level of Marketing Consists Of
The instrumental level is about team + technology. However, only a few individuals feel comfortable in both areas, as each requires different skills. Effective online marketing management requires specific knowledge. However, having a basic understanding of the key principles and technologies is sufficient to effectively manage this process.
In the technology world, there is a phenomenon known as the “digital divide,” which implies differences in the skills and knowledge needed to effectively use digital technologies. Some people naturally and easily embrace new technologies, while others find it challenging. For some, mastering new applications, setting up internet advertising, or creating an automated sales funnel is an exciting challenge; others may feel lost, not knowing where to start.
Business owners need to understand the basics of internet marketing and sales and comprehend how things like Facebook advertising work. This knowledge helps make informed decisions and effectively manage a team or contractors handling these matters. How to achieve this if technology is not your strong suit will be discussed in the next chapter.
The “Black Box” Principle
If you want to manage programmers, you need not only managerial skills but also an understanding of software development technology. Similarly, when facing unknown aspects of marketing, the first thing you should do is learn its basics. However, if you don’t have time for this, there is a method that allows you to quickly start processes without in-depth knowledge—the “black box” principle. This approach focuses on what goes into and comes out of the system, ignoring the complexities inside.
It’s important to understand what you want to get out of it—these could be leads with specific parameters, for example. Knowing what kind of leads and which parameters you need is crucial for assessing the effectiveness of your advertising campaign. Important parameters include the cost of the lead, its quality, and the likelihood of conversion to sale.
By understanding these aspects, you can effectively manage marketing efforts without delving into the details of each tool or technology, using the black box method for a quick start and adjusting processes as results are obtained. In the next chapter, we will look at another instrumental method using leads as an example.
Quality Check of Leads
I recommend using several methods to evaluate the quality of leads—cost, quality, and conversion to sales. This will help you effectively manage marketing efforts. The main parameters we focus on at Business Booster are the cost of the lead, its quality, and conversion to sales.
In the first stage of analysis, we rely on conversion: whether our potential customers are buying at all. For a deep understanding of lead quality, we apply a combination of methods, including direct communication with customers, surveys, and questionnaires. Such tools allow us to determine how well a lead matches our target audience and its purchasing potential.
Using questionnaires and surveys right after a person enters our sales funnel is one of the key moments. This helps us quickly assess how accurately we have targeted the audience. An interesting point—even the percentage of completed questionnaires can serve as an indicator of lead quality. If the completion percentage suddenly drops, this may indicate a problem, often not of a technical nature, but related to changes in the quality of traffic or advertising.
The final check of lead quality—their conversion to sales, is carried out by the salespeople. However, it is important to note that information from salespeople requires additional verification, for example, by listening to calls. This is necessary to ensure the objectivity of the salespeople’s assessment of lead quality, as they may distort the real picture due to their own misconceptions or errors. More on this will be discussed in the next chapter.
The Need to Understand Input Data
A common mistake many entrepreneurs make is underestimating the importance of input data for an advertising campaign. It should start with a clear understanding of the target audience and well-prepared content. In our work with online advertising, we analyze over 500 parameters in the analytics system. This helps us understand in detail how each advertising campaign works and what kind of leads it generates.
Also, each element of the input data must be thoroughly processed. A simple example—if an employee responsible for preparing content or setting up advertising changes, and the new specialist does not have adequate qualifications or understanding of the task, this will immediately affect the quality of the outgoing leads. Therefore, it is crucial to have not only the right tools and technologies but also to ensure a proper level of preparation and understanding of tasks among all participants in the process.
Challenges can arise at any stage: from incorrect definition of the target audience to errors in setting up advertising campaigns. To prevent such problems, it’s important to continuously monitor and analyze all stages of working with leads from their inception to their conversion into sales. In this context, having a deep understanding of the mechanisms of digital marketing and sales is critical to effectively manage the entire process and ensure the high quality of outgoing leads.
Successful generation of quality leads requires a comprehensive approach, starting from thorough preparation of input data to detailed analysis of the obtained results. Only this can achieve high efficiency of advertising campaigns and ensure a steady flow of high-quality leads capable of converting into sales. Next, we’ll talk more about how to control the advertising creation process.
Control Over the Advertising Creation Process
It’s important to control not only the input and output data but also the process of creating advertising. For this purpose, I created the “Ad Creatives Factory” project in our company. It helped establish standards of quality and consistency for advertising materials.
Here, a key point in controlling ad creatives — what the client sees — is not just input data or the result, but the core of the process, which is often ignored by many. Entrepreneurs often simply provide marketing materials or funding, expecting to receive quality leads without delving into the details of what exactly is being done.
However, without control over how exactly ad creatives are created and used, there is a risk of getting ineffective advertising, which not only won’t lead to desired results but could also damage the brand’s reputation.
From my own experience in launching advertising campaigns, I realized that control over ad creatives is crucial. There were times when, without proper oversight, advertising materials created by contractors were far from ideal—they could mismatch the style and values of the brand or even contain unacceptable content.
The main goal of the “Creatives Factory” is to ensure 100% control over all advertising materials created for our company. We created a special chat in Telegram where all new creatives are immediately published for review. This allowed not only me, as the business owner, but also our team of marketers and designers to react timely to any changes and adjust advertising materials according to our standards and requirements.
Becoming more critical in selecting advertising agencies, we began providing them with extensive ready-made materials to create effective advertising. Having our large advertising department allows us to operate without contractors in most cases. In cases of cooperation with external performers, all advertising creatives go through our internal control system—the “Creatives Factory.”
This approach has allowed us to achieve a high level of consistency and quality of advertising materials. Each ad creative now undergoes thorough scrutiny to ensure it aligns with campaign goals, company style and branding, as well as effectiveness and potential to attract the target audience. In the next chapter, I’ll discuss what is needed for everyone to achieve success in promotion.
Standardization and Training
A business owner should start by setting standards and training the team, transforming their knowledge into regulations and instructions. This ensures quality and efficiency at all levels of marketing activity.
My position is this: if you are currently the most competent specialist in a certain area, start by controlling and setting standards yourself. Each of my proposals and feedback transformed into regulations and instructions now used by the Business Booster team. Since the system was established, I stopped monitoring the process of creating ad creatives daily, but periodic checks still bring me pleasure from the results I see.
Such checks allow you to peek into any aspect of the business and ensure its effectiveness. For instance, Alexander Vysockiy might not be aware of certain internal processes, as he is not a direct performer in marketing. But for me, as a business owner interested in marketing, it’s important to keep this aspect under control. This eventually became our strong competitive advantage at the level of major brands.
For business owners, it’s important to understand the basics of internet marketing and sales, even if you’re not directly involved in setting up advertising. This knowledge allows you to make informed decisions and manage contractors. Systematizing the development of marketing materials within the company enhances service quality and reduces the dependency of results on individual employees. Therefore, training is the surest path to effective promotion and scaling of the business.
