Author: Alan Maddick 24/04/2017
Today I was talking to one of my colleagues about marketing and I thought I would share some of the knowledge I have gleaned over the years from experience as well as the seemingly never ending stream of degrees I have completed over the years. The following is the 3 main things that I personally think are really important in marketing your business.
Firstly as I tell everyone the most important part of any marketing is to test & measure – what to I mean? I mean you need to ask all your new clients “how did you hear about us” when making a marketing plan all you are doing is making educated decisions about the different marketing that may help your business so it is critical no matter what marketing you do that you check if it works and quantify exactly who well it works. This allows you to make even better decisions next year.
Second decide on the objective of your marketing – the two main types of marketing are “background” marketing to raise brand awareness or direct marketing ie marketing which you expect a response from a consumer as a direct result of the marketing. Often when we hear direct marketing we think telemarketing or direct mail but most marketing can be direct or background marketing, for example a television Ad showing your brand and happy customers would be background while an Ad telling you to call today to get 10% off your order would be direct marketing. For most small businesses direct marketing is the most important form of marketing.
Lastly consider using Niche marketing. What do I mean? In this context a Niche is a small subset of possible clients or customers, this could be demographics based – ie males between 21-30yo living in SE Melbourne or it could be behavior or industry based for example everyone who goes to xx school or I want to target Doctors. Advocates of this style of marketing would say the narrower your target the better your marketing message will be as you can use mediums and tools to get access to these exact clients and the messaging you use can be tailored to the audience. Before you start to target a particular niche you should do some analysis and estimation of how large the niche you are targeting is, it is important it is large enough to be commercially significant for your business.
Hopefully this article is a little bit helpful for you & your business. Feel free to get in touch HERE to discuss further.