Marketing: How To

A: Determine your target market. What geographic, demographic and psychographics are you trying to reach? Determining your target market is immensely important to the success of your advertising buy. If you are an established business, looking at your own data may surprise you. You may find that your top 20 clients are all upper income women, living in Lake Oswego, Oregon. These top 20 women represent your most lucrative segment and you want your advertising to specifically reach more of this ideal client.

Informally interview your ideal customers. Ask what types of local publications they read, what local TV channels and radio stations they listen to. Take it a step further and query for co-marketing promotional ideas and find out your ideal customer’s favorite restaurant and retail shops. Be sure to collect all of this information and add to an electronic spreadsheet to query and quantify your data in an on-going fashion. I recommend that my clients add newly acquired data to their spreadsheet daily, but once or twice a week should suffice if you keep very careful handwritten notes. Be sure to back-up all of your customer and business data often!

Determine how to position your business’s product or service in the mind of the consumer. Are you less expensive than your competitors (Winco)? Is your service or product more dependable than you competitors (Honda)? Is your product safer than your competitors (Volvo)? Be sure your positioning statement is honest and a statement of value to the target audience. In 2007, I wrote a brief article on positioning. Remember, your market position is always evolving.

Determine your marketing message. Based off of your business’s positioning statement, address how your unique product or service fits into your target audience’s problems, desires, hopes, and fears. How can your product or service benefit the prospect?

Determine your marketing budget. After working in the corporate world and writing annual marketing plans and budgets, I found that writing budgets and marketing plans quarterly to be more realistic. So much changes in a year and your business needs to remain agile. If a quarter is too long of a period for your small business; take stock of your marketing budget at least monthly. Why? You must allocate enough of your budget to each chosen advertising vehicle for the most impact. If you only have $400 to spend on advertising this month, it may be wise to stick with just one or two paid advertising vehicles just to be sure that your two vehicles are properly funded. Your advertising budget must be large enough to meet the growth goals of your company.