Any marketing consultant will tell you that marketing is the most important thing you will do with your business. Between you and me….they’re actually right. Good marketing will always generate new customers and keep your current clients coming back. So how do you generate good marketing without paying huge dollars to a marketing consultant?
There are 7 key steps towards a good marketing strategy. If you have multiple niche markets, each one should be assessed on its own merits and have its own marketing strategy.
1. Know your target market
You need to learn about the wants, needs and desires of your target market. What they do and where they go. The better you understand your customer the easier to you will find it to write a marketing strategy that ‘speaks’ directly to them. You should determine if your ideal customer is male or female, their age (within a 10 year range), and any other key points related to your product e.g. customer is a home owner and you are an interior designer. The better you understand your target market the easier the following steps will become.
2. Use language your customer understands
The marketing material you use to communicate with your customer needs to be in the language that they can understand. You can show them scientific proof of why your product is superior but if they don’t understand the jargon or it’s not expressed in terms of their wants or needs then you will not capture their attention. Use simple direct language and remember that your customers don’t understand your product as well as you do!
3. Know the message you are trying to convey to your customer
Are you trying to generate a lead (product awareness) or a sale? Make sure you are clear which one you want to achieve before writing your marketing material. If you try and do both at the same time you will at best dilute your message (decreasing your effectiveness) and at worst confuse your customer.
Your message should be clear, to the point and a call to action i.e. the customer gives you contact details to receive more information (a lead) or gives you a credit card number (a sale!).
4. Translate your product into value to your customer
Marketing is about demonstrating that the product provides more value to the customer than what it costs them. If someone doesn’t buy your product then it means they are not your target audience or you haven’t clearly demonstrated enough value to that customer.
The most well know example of value demonstration is the home shopping networks offers of “we’ll throw in a free set of steak knives worth $$$!” The bonus knives provide extra value for the cost of the product but they also have an implied value; that you are popular and entertain a lot of people. This type of advertisement is very good at demonstrating that the value is exceeding the cost of the initial purchase, we all know at least one person who has received a free set of steak knives!
5. Choose the correct place to advertise
Advertise or deploy where your target market is located. For example if you sold skate boards you would advertise in a young peoples magazine or on pin up boards near the local skate park not in the newsletter of the local retirement village. Another consideration is to market when your customer is in the right frame of mind, i.e. they are receptive to your marketing message.
For example you probably wouldn’t want to try and advertise health insurance in the Emergency Department of your hospital, it would definitely be the wrong place at the wrong time and more likely to frustrate your target market than encourage them to buy.
6. Market research
Sounds like it will cost a lot of money and take time, and it can, or you can choose to use simpler more cost effective methods. Analyse data from The Australian Bureau of Statistics (or equivalent), write surveys and questionnaires related to your product and marketing strategy then find a focus group.
You don’t necessarily need to use a marketing company to create a focus group, friends or friend-of-friends who represent your target market are also able to test your product, ideas and assumptions.
Measure their responses, acknowledge what works and try to improve it, change what doesn’t and retest. Effective use of focus groups can save you a lot of time and money in the long run.
7. How are you going to measure your marketing success?
There is no point implementing a marketing strategy unless you can measure your results. An increase in income (whilst very nice) is not sufficient. You need to know what exactly resulted from your marketing strategy.
Did it increase the number of customers or do you still have the same number of customers but now they are purchasing more? How long did it take for your marketing to start working? Write a short list of questions related to the marketing strategy to ask your customers, for example “How did you hear about our special?” This gives you the opportunity to find out if they received your marketing literature or a word of mouth referral. Tracking this information will be useful when planning your next marketing strategy.
From here you can then create your marketing strategies and easily produce marketing material that will hit the target every time.
Photo by: jakeprzespo
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