Street Smarts Marketing & Promotions

Your marketing is more than a one time definition

Marketing involves finding and defining target markets for your products and services. Your marketing must be able to match the product to specific groups of people that are willing and able to buy the product and to know the differences of each of these target markets.

Rather than assuming that you will go through the process of defining your market once and be done with it, you must treat market identification as an ongoing process.

Target market information allows you to increase revenues, decrease cost of marketing, refine your sales processes, determine more clearly who a prospect is and is not, discover market changes, and find more new customers.

Explain this part of marketing to me!

A few weeks ago I received a postcard in the mail from a lawn care company. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Just the day before I was thinking about calling someone about caring for my lawn. I gave the company a call to find out about their services. Here's what happened.

1. I called the 800 number to inquire about what they could do for me.

2. Had a very pleasant conversation with a guy named Dave. (I had gone from a cold lead to a warm lead)

3. I asked Dave to send someone out to let me know what treatment options were available. (At that point I went from being a warm lead to being a HOT lead)

4. I was assured someone would be by within  a week. (that was 3 weeks ago)

5. No one has come around to give me an estimate.

What an absolute waste of their marketing dollars. Granted, this is likely a very busy time of year for the company, but when I was told one week to get the estimate and it is now three weeks later, I am turning cold very quickly.

Do this and you may be negating your marketing efforts

Not a day goes by that I don’t talk to people about marketing. Since marketing is what I teach and do, it stands to reason this would be so. In all the conversations I have had I realize that often people lose sight of what marketing is. There are some who believe marketing is an action and that is it.

I contend that marketing also has to do with one’s mindset. If someone takes a physical action in their marketing; advertising, media release, online campaign, etc., that is one aspect of marketing. Even more important is the belief behind the action.

Say you take an action to market a product or service with the assumption that the action will bring a result. However, throughout your day you talk about how slow business is or you comment on the fact there is a recession going on.

An often missed aspect of defining a market

Marketing involves finding and defining target markets for your products and services. Your marketing must be able to match the product to specific groups of people that are willing and able to buy the product and to know the differences of each of these target markets.

Rather than assuming that you will go through the process of defining your market once and be done with it, you must treat market identification as an ongoing process.

Target market information allows you to increase revenues, decrease cost of marketing, refine your sales processes, determine more clearly who a prospect is and is not, discover market changes, and find more new customers.

To get the most out of your marketing, do this....

Marketing involves finding and defining target markets for your products and services. Your marketing must be able to match the product to specific groups of people that are willing and able to buy the product and to know the differences of each of these target markets.

Rather than assuming that you will go through the process of defining your market once and be done with it, you must treat market identification as an ongoing process.

Target market information allows you to increase revenues, decrease cost of marketing, refine your sales processes, determine more clearly who a prospect is and is not, discover market changes, and find more new customers.

The better you can define your customers and their interests, distinguishing characteristics, and other distinctive factors about them, the more effective your marketing dollars will become. Once you know who your market is you can better set up a system for your marketing.

You may actually have several different markets. For example, you may have one product line that is more generic and less costly than another. The people who would buy the first product line may be very different than those that buy a second, third or fourth, more costly product line.

Kathleen Gage
The Street Smarts Marketer
www.streetsmartsmarketing.com