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Tag: target marketing

  • Target Marketing – Visualise that Persona

    Your Target Marketing Personae

    In Target Marketing, for a business-to-consumer (B2C) enterprise, you should try to paint a picture of a persona that represents the actual real-life market you are hoping to develop.

    Taking into account factors like family status, number of children, age bracket, income level, motivations, behaviours, etc., you should try to build a picture of that special person for whom you hope to solve a problem. Of course, your business might cater for more than one target market, in which case you build two or more distinct personae. The point here is that, if you want to communicate with the right type of person for your business, you need to be able to picture that person in your mind’s eye. In this way, you will more carefully consider your marketing content and the media across which you send out your content.

    Target marketing
    Pursue representative target market personae

    This is not to say that you will refuse a sale of your product or service to somebody who does not precisely fit your established persona. Of course not. It simply means that you will direct your energy and resources solely at clearly defined target markets.

    So your target market persona might be a 50 year-old single lady living in Dublin, who plays tennis and likes to lunch out with her lady friends. Or yours might be a young couple, with two children under the age of 6, who own a Volvo saloon and like to go cycling. Yours might have enjoyed the now defunct Mooney Show on RTE Radio 1, or might always have been more of a Moncrieff on Newstalk listener.

    Target Marketing – Its Place

    Don’t forget that target marketing comes third of the four elements that make up the Marketing Process. It is preceded by Situation Analysis, where you line up what you’ve got and what not, what you’re great at and what not, etc. A SWOT Analysis should form part of that step. Then comes Marketing Research, where you find out all you need to know about the market as a whole, competitors, etc. Only then does Target Marketing take centre stage, as you look at all your cards and realise which market segment(s) your offering will suit best. After all, marketing is about offering solutions to your market. Finally, the Marketing Mix is where you settle on your product, its pricing, distribution and promotion.

  • Marketing Process – The Structure Behind Ideas

    The Marketing Process – Your Strategy

    Play word association with ‘marketing’ and many will respond with ‘advertising’. Others might come up with ‘promoting’, or even offer up ‘Facebook‘ nowadays. Rarely will somebody utter ‘marketing process’.

    And yet, as small business owners and marketeers, we should be thinking more about the Marketing Process as a whole rather than simply its exciting promotional element. So bear with me here.

    In marketing jargon, there are four elements to the Marketing Process – the strategic steps through which we should go when looking for direction, ideas and actions.

    First, there’s Situation Analysis. Here, we look at the marketplace as a whole and what resources we have, how our business, product or service stacks up and what trends are out there that we could be taking advantage of. One part of this step is the good old SWOT Analysis. What are our Strengths and Weaknesses? What Opportunities and Threats are out there?

    Second, there’s Marketing Research. Here, we carry out research into what competitors are offering, or what current and potential customers are looking for. Think of it as validation of what we’ve discovered during Situation Analysis, or as a means to answering the questions that will inevitably have popped up.

    Third, it’s Target Marketing. Armed with the kind of good information that the first two steps will have furnished us with, we should now have a sound picture of the marketplace. It’s now time to pick and choose between the various market segments and home in on the one or more we feel we can best serve.

    Fourth (and only having completed the other steps), it’s time to get to the juicy bit – the Marketing Mix.

    Now, having worked methodically through those first three (less appealing) steps, we can make better decisions about product offers, pricing levels, distribution channels and promotional mix. Why? Because we’ve learned so much already.

    I like to call these four steps “Now, Check, Aim, Fire”. Note how, along with the fourth, the first three don’t stop. They are not a simple once-off exercise; they are ongoing.

    Marketing Process
    The Marketing Process – Now, Check, Aim, Fire

    ‘Now’ signifies looking around and seeing where you’re at. ‘Check’ is about researching and validating what you believe to be true. ‘Aim’ is for finding your preferred target markets. Finally, you ‘Fire’ your mix of product, price, place and promotion at that or those target markets you’ve identified.

    The Marketing Process

    Check back over the coming months for more detailed posts about each step.