Targeting prospective customers.
How easy would life be if your products and services fulfilled everyone’s needs and wants? You’d only need one marketing strategy, one marketing plan and then you could sit back and watch the dollars roll in.
Ahhh we can only dream. Even for toilet paper manufacturers it’s a struggle, I mean we all use toilet paper don’t we? One marketing plan right? No!. Even toilet paper manufacturers have to re invent their own products and target specific markets – Families want longer length rolls, environmentalists want unbleached, blue collars want softer, teens want patterns, singles want scents. And the list goes on and on!
The idea is to break your business into segments or SBUs (separate business units). That’s the first step.
Let’s say you run and IT company selling communications. You have systems that suit home businesses right through to businesses with 100 plus employees.
Simply define your products to two specific markets.
Primary and secondary, your primary market consists of the majority of people your products specifically suits and the secondary market consists of those people who may be interested to buy/use your product/service.
Heres a quick example.
How easy would life be if your products and services fulfilled everyone’s needs and wants? You’d only need one marketing strategy, one marketing plan and then you could sit back and watch the dollars roll in.
Ahhh we can only dream. Even for toilet paper manufacturers it’s a struggle, I mean we all use toilet paper don’t we? One marketing plan right? No!. Even toilet paper manufacturers have to re invent their own products and target specific markets – Families want longer length rolls, environmentalists want unbleached, blue collars want softer, teens want patterns, singles want scents. And the list goes on and on!
The idea is to break your business into segments or SBUs (separate business units). That’s the first step.
Let’s say you run and IT company selling communications. You have systems that suit home businesses right through to businesses with 100 plus employees.
Simply define your products to two specific markets.
Primary and secondary, your primary market consists of the majority of people your products specifically suits and the secondary market consists of those people who may be interested to buy/use your product/service.
Heres a quick example.Step 2 – Now you have identified which products suit which target markets, you need to apply a specific budget to each marketing plan to reach these customers. Once you have done the plan, you can then decide in which order of importance you wish to execute them. You would define this based on either increasing volume, increasing brand awareness or increasing bottom line profits. Heres another quick example of defining the market
Step 3 – implement and evaluate. Even though the information contained within this enews is quite simple, using a method like this can help you stay focused and start planning! No matter what business you are in, these methods can apply to you.
Remember before you start spending marketing dollars willy nilly, be sure to give your business a quick health check for e.g. ensure your website is up to date before you start sending leads there, be sure all your marketing collateral including brochures are also ready to go. It’s no good finding out your material is dated when you need to send it to someone.
I hope this news has provided some useful tools and information. Please contact us if you would like further information or just some friendly advice.
Remember before you start spending marketing dollars willy nilly, be sure to give your business a quick health check for e.g. ensure your website is up to date before you start sending leads there, be sure all your marketing collateral including brochures are also ready to go. It’s no good finding out your material is dated when you need to send it to someone.
I hope this news has provided some useful tools and information. Please contact us if you would like further information or just some friendly advice.
Labels: advertising, direct marketing, email marketing, marketing plans, tips for marketing
posted by Marketing Mechanics at
11:15 AM
