When it comes to starting up, growing, and developing your own business, nothing is more important than marketing.
“A business cannot survive without their customers” – no matter what type, every business relies on their customers to keep them afloat.
This means you have to find ways to bring in customers so that your business can continue to operate – and this is what Marketing does.
How do you define marketing?
Before we start, let’s first define marketing.
Marketing is the process of continuously and profitability satisfying target customers’ needs, wants, and expectations while beating the competition.
This means that in the process of continuously satisfying your customer’s needs, wants and expectations, you are also making a profit while getting ahead of the competitors that are in the same industry as you.
In marketing, you are aiming for a give-and-take. In exchange for giving your customers what they want, they are also giving you what you want.
In the main work of Marketing, we follow one belief: The customer is king.
This phrase reflects the importance of customers in every business. This means that all your strategies in marketing should revolve around your customer’s satisfaction.
One of the first steps in developing your Marketing strategy is to define your target market.
A target market is a group of people or customers that will most likely buy your product or service.
Who is my target market? One thing that every business wants is a wide range of customers. More customers mean more profit, right? Because of this, the only logic to this is to target as many people as possible to buy your product or service – if you’re thinking this way, then it’s wrong!
In developing an effective marketing strategy, the more focused you are on a group, the more effective your strategy is.
“If you’re targeting everyone you are targeting no one”, Just like how celebrities cannot please everyone, it’s impossible to be liked by all people. In the process of satisfying one area, there will always be another area that won’t be satisfied. It’s a waste of time, money, and energy.
Which is why you need to focus on a group of people. For example, Gucci’s target market is customers with high status and high income; Nike’s target market is athletes specifically between ages 15-40; Victoria’s secret caters to women ages 13-29 or 30-50 looking for undergarments. The more focused your target market or audience is, the more focused your strategy can be in making sure they are happy with your product or services.
You could even develop strategies to get them to enjoy a pleasant, personalized experience with your product or service.
People like a touch of personalized experience when it comes to buying something, whether it may be a service or a product. The more pleasant their experience is, the more likely they will come back.
“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.” - Steve Jobs
It's better to come up with strategies on how to make your loyal customers happy than trying to come up with strategies on how to make first-time purchasers happy with little to no guarantee that they'll return.
For instance, Business A is a small company that gives appraising services to its clients. Since they’ve already identified their target market, which is government-owned businesses or other privately owned businesses that need their services, they can concentrate on how to make them satisfied aside from their main line of work. In business, especially when it comes to appraising or service works similar to the field, the most important element is communication. The client needs to communicate with Business A for them to build their appraisal report. After all, the one that knows the item that’s being appraised the best is the client.
To set them apart from their other competitors, Business A makes sure to answer all the client’s calls, emails, or texts the moment they receive them no matter what time of the day – unlike the other big appraisal businesses with a 9 to 5 working hour. Since Business A is a small company, they only have a handful of clients that can take it due to their limited resources. Instead of this being a weakness, they turned it into a strength. Since they only have a handful of clients, they can personalize their services to make all of their clients beyond satisfied which, in turn, will make them come back to them.
Start small – Don’t start big.
Instead of trying to make a lot of customers just ‘satisfied’, start by making a few customers happy to the point of wanting to come back. Taking small steps is the key. This means finding ways to keep your old customers by focusing on them instead of trying to find new customers every time.
The more well-defined your target market is, the more concentrated your plans can be.
Once you do this, then you can move on to the next Marketing strategy which is advertising your business to your target market: Identify other aspects or key benefits that your business provides. Tell your features and let your company’s benefits sell. What benefit will your company or business’ main service give to your customers?
Here’s a Marketing Tip: Just like with Business A, to attract people to you, you have to offer what others in the same line as you don’t have.
You have to stand out and make sure that your marketing strategy outperforms your other competitors.
A good way to assess your product or business is to use the SWOT analysis. Which stands for:
STRENGTH, WEAKNESS, OPPORTUNITY, THREAT
Swot analysis is usually used to evaluate a business’s competitive position to see where they stand overall and develop strategic plans based on the data given. This is usually used as a guide to see which areas to improve or which areas to use.
Strength refers to the company itself – how do the company and its product differ from other competitors? It can be about your product itself, financial situation, manufacturing techniques, etc.
Weakness refers to anything that is hindering your business from performing at the optimum level. Some examples are lack of capital, lack of resources, weak brand, multiple debts, etc.
Opportunities refer to any external factors that can be used to your business’s advantage. For instance, the lowering of corporate tax law can lessen your expenses.
Threats refer to any external factors that can harm your business. A common example of this is usually natural disasters, especially in disaster-prone areas. Other common threats are inflation, rising costs, increasing competition, etc.
You could use this to analyze how you can use your strengths and opportunities to your advantage and how you can improve your weaknesses and prepare for your threats.
At this point, you’ve already identified your target market and analyzed your business and your product or service. The next step is to market your product or service to the target market.
When marketing your product, you need to consider four essential factors – which are the 4 Ps of Marketing.
What are the 4 Ps of Marketing? We have Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
First is Product: What is the good or service you are offering? Will it meet the needs of your target market? How is your product or service different from what others offer?
Marketing tip: people like novelty. Giving your customers a needed item or service while providing them with a novel customer experience will make the chances of them coming back to you high.
Second is Price: What is the price range of your target market? What is the price range of your competitors? If you place your product at this price, will it benefit you? Will your price range fit your target market?
Remember: Demand is sensitive to price. If a market deems the price too high, your product or service will most likely not meet the needs of the market.
Next, is Place: Where will you sell your product or give your service? How will you distribute your product or service to your target market?
Fun Fact: for a service business, especially consultants, the most common place they distribute their services is online. Lastly is Promotion: What marketing channels are most effective for your target audience? What is the best time to reach your target customers? What advertising approaches can persuade your target market?
For example: if your target market is students and college students, studies show that night or early in the morning is the best time to release your advertisements, especially on social media apps such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
In Summary, to make an effective Marketing strategy, you have to first define your target audience and analyze your business to develop and enhance the right product or service, making it available at the right place with the right promotion and the right price to satisfy your target market while reaching your desired business goal.
It may not be easy, but it’s not impossible.
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