Small business owners who understand marketing appreciate the importance of having a clearly defined marketing strategy and marketing objectives. Put simply, effective marketing creates a demand for a company's products or services. It's an opportunity to identify potential customers, and convinces prospects that a company's offerings have intrinsic value to meet their needs. Marketing also enables a company to distinguish itself from competitors.
The problem is most small business owners are so busy running their companies that they don't take the time to do market research that could greatly enhance the marketing strategy. A good marketing campaign starts with understanding current and prospective customers through market research.
Research enables a company to learn what customers want, improve existing products and services, and attract new customers. Your market research does not have to be elaborate or expensive, nor do you need to hire a market research firm. Small businesses can conduct their own market research by getting feedback from customers on new products or services, researching what the competition is doing and how they're pricing, interviewing prospective customers about their needs, keeping up with industry trends and studies, and establishing an advisory board to get a "fresh set of eyes."
After you've completed such initial market research, try these six additional tips to deepen your market knowledge and sharpen your strategy.
1. Identify and clearly define your market opportunities. If you haven't already done so, determine what opportunities exist and how they could be marketed and capitalized upon. Based on these opportunities, is your marketing plan working? If not, don't delay in making changes so your company can take advantage of present opportunities.
2. Have a well-crafted, differentiated brand. How well are your company and your products and services branded? You should be able to easily describe them in specific terms. If you can't, start the branding process by finding one simple idea that your company can use to define and differentiate itself, can implement immediately, and can introduce into the marketplace with the least possible effort.
3. Develop pricing that's competitive. Do a simple survey of your competition to make sure your pricing is competitive. Customers want value and benefits for the dollars they spend. All things being equal, customers will seek products and services with the lowest cost; therefore, businesses must be able to differentiate their products and services in order to command higher prices.
4. Tailor your marketing campaign for the target market. Is your marketing campaign aimed at the target market composed of potential buyers? A marketing campaign may be good but off target, rendering it ineffective for its intended purpose. Review your marketing campaign to discover if it's directed to more than the intended target (too broad), or not directed to all of the target audience (too narrow). To spend marketing dollars wisely, you need to hit the target market effectively.
5. Test elements of your marketing campaign for effectiveness. One way of running a successful marketing program is to determine which components are producing the most positive results. Change one component at a time -- for example, special offers, radio ads, direct mail, or cold calling -- to judge its impact on revenue. You'll then be able to determine which marketing strategy and/or component works or doesn't work best for your company.
6. Seek out new ways to generate marketing ideas. Are you, the owner, the only one who handles all of your company's marketing efforts? There's nothing wrong with this, but many times new ideas aren't generated when the same person continuously handles all the marketing for a company. If this is the case, consider involving others to generate new ideas. Sure, you can consult marketing firms, but often employees, customers, and vendors come up with unique and creative ideas. Sponsoring a "Marketing Think Tank" dinner might prove to be a great return on your investment.
Don't waste marketing dollars. Hit the mark every time and make the dollars work for you!
