There are several elements to consider when you are developing your marketing strategy.
Segmentation
Your existing and potential customers fall into particular groups or segments, characterized by their ‘needs’. Identifying these groups and their needs through market research and market reports, and then addressing those needs more successfully than your competitors, should be one of the key elements of your marketing strategy.
Targeting and positioning
You should aim to sell to the market segments that will be most profitable for your business. It is important that your product offering meets the needs of your chosen target market. See target your most profitable customers and define your target market.
You should create a marketing strategy that makes the most of your strengths and matches them to the needs of the customers you want to target. For example, if a particular group of customers is looking for quality first and foremost, then any marketing activity aimed at them should draw attention to the high quality of your products or service.
Promotional tactics
Once you have created your marketing strategy, you must then decide which marketing activity or activities will ensure your target market know about the products or services you offer, and why they meet their needs.
There are many ways to achieve this – such as various forms of advertising, exhibitions, public relations, digital marketing and an effective ‘point of sale’ strategy. Try to limit your activities to those methods you think will work best with your target market, to avoid spreading your budget too thinly.
Monitoring and evaluation
Monitoring and evaluating how effective your strategy has been is a key element, yet often overlooked. This control element not only helps you see how your strategy is performing in practice, it can also help inform your future marketing strategy.
A simple approach is to ask each new customer how they heard about your business. Deeper analysis can come from questionnaires, focus groups and examining customers’ online behaviour.
Marketing plan
Once you have decided on your marketing strategy, draw up a marketing plan that sets out how you intend to execute that strategy and evaluate its success. The plan should be constantly reviewed and, if necessary, updated so you can respond quickly to changes in customer needs and attitudes in your industry and in the broader economic climate. Read more about how to write a marketing plan.
Define your target market
When creating your marketing strategy, you need to understand your target market – ie the specific group of consumers you will be aiming your products or services at. These are the customers who are most likely to buy from you, and who will make your business successful.
When trying to define your target market, you should consider who will be most likely to buy your products or services. Consider aiming your strategy at certain target markets, such as:
- females or males
- age groups
- regional areas
- education or interests
- occupations
- average incomes
You should also consider how different groups of potential customer might use your product or service. For example, older customers might have different wants and needs to younger customers. Therefore, you might have several target markets to focus on.
Understand your product or service
You can only identify your target market if you fully understand your product’s benefits and features. You should consider the following points when assessing your product:
- What is the purpose of your product – is it to solve problems, satisfy basic needs, or simply a luxury item?
- Advantages your product has over other competitors’.
- Customer problems that your product or service can solve – if applicable.
Identifying your customer
It is equally important that you establish who your product or service is aimed at. Your marketing strategy will fail if you target the wrong audience from the start, regardless of how good it is.
You need to establish whether your target group are individual consumers or other businesses. There are often two important differences between these target groups:
- individual customers – sales to this group can be unpredictable, and customers usually have smaller budgets and specific buying preferences
- businesses – sales to this group are often more predictable and stable as there is usually a greater budget available to be used on various products
It is possible to target both types of customer, though you need to be realistic about whether your product or service is relevant for them. For example, a cleaning service may apply to both consumer groups, whereas a new clothing brand will probably only interest individuals.
Researching your potential customer base
Once you know your groups of customers, you can look to conduct further research to learn more about their specific needs. For example, older customer groups may buy different types of products to younger groups.
‘Market segmentation’ can be an effective tool for this. It involves splitting your customer groups into smaller segments to find the sections of your customer base that will be most profitable to your business. You can segment customers by:
- lifestyle
- social class
- opinion
- activities and interests
- attitudes and beliefs
It can help to profile groups of customers to better understand their needs and behaviors. You can examine data about customers with common demographic characteristics and look for patterns. For example you may find that new mothers prefer to order online or that students buy more discount offers.
You should also consider the factors such as the following when deciding which marketing segments to target:
- Is the segment large enough to support your marketing goals?
- Does your business have the skills and expertise to deal with the chosen segment?
- Is there growth in the segment?
By focusing on the smaller segments, you can learn a lot about them and structure your marketing campaigns accordingly.
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