Let’s talk about Business Marketing.
Developing a proper strategy for marketing in business allows you to capture and reach the right audience for your product/service.
If you are an entrepreneur trying to market your products/service on a shoestring budget, developing a good marketing strategy is a good place to start. This way, you are able to manage the resources you have, allocated to marketing efficiently and getting the most of it.
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Here are the overall steps to developing a good marketing strategy for your business:
1. Analyze your marketing environment
The external marketing environment include the micro and macro environment
- The micro-environment – These are forces in the external marketing environment that are distinct and individual to a particular business; such as suppliers, distributors, customers, competition and the general public.
- The macro environment – These are forces in the external marketing environment that affect businesses in general such as demographics, natural factors, technology, political factors, legal factors, social factors, cultural factors
2. Identify your competitive advantage
Analyze competition. What are your competitors doing, what have they done successfully, what have they failed at? Analyze the internal resources of your company to determine what can be used to create an advantage.
Identify and build up your competitive advantage.
3. Segment your market
This involves breaking down broad markets into smaller homogeneous groups of customers. Broad markets are broken down based on certain traits.
This makes it easier to understand, focus and connect with potential customers who are likely to buy your product/service; thus making marketing efforts more efficient.
Market segmentation can be done based on different factors such as demographics, lifestyle, geographical locations e.t.c. It is however important that markets are segmented based on factors that are relevant to individuals within each of the groups.
4. Select your target market
From the market segments you have been able to create, you can test to determine your main target audience, test, select and decide to focus on customers your company can best satisfy.
5. Identify core benefits your company can offer to its customers (your target market)
It’s important to understand what value means to your customers.
6. Position your business
Write a positioning statement to consciously position your brand in the minds of your customers/clients. Your positioning statement should determine how you present your business to customers/clients, it should show what you are known for.
Elements of a strong positioning statement include your core value proposition, the unique value you offer customers/clients in relation to your top competitors, target audience and finally benefits your products/services offer the target audience.
There are various formats for writing positioning statements, here are 2 practical ones you can use:
- Your core value proposition: for your target audience who are in need of the benefits your business offers as well as its unique value.
- For target market description who target market need, how your business offering meets the need, unlike the key competition, its most distinguishing feature.
7. The marketing mix ( the 4Ps)
Product – What product will be sold and what differentiates this products from that of the competition? Are the products on offer relevant to the (target) customers?
Are there related products that can be marketed with the initial products?
Price – This refers to how much a customer is willing to pay for a product /service.
Three factors to be considered when determining the price of a product include the “cost price of the product, what the competitors are selling for and value added”.
Place – Where your product is sold matters. How accessible are your products to potential customers? Consider the type of product to determine where to sell or distribute your products.
Promotion – This involves the way you tell customers about your products/services. Activities involved include adverts, personal selling, PR efforts, and sales promotion.
Overall here are tips that can make your marketing strategy better.
- Marketing strategies should be flexible
- Define the right marketing message to determine the right marketing method.
- Think of your brand in terms of your customers’ needs and how you intend to satisfy them.
- Selling is not marketing and marketing is not selling.
- Don’t always use pricing as a basis for competing; especially when you don’t know the depth of the pockets of your competitors so you don’t end up pricing yourself out of the market.
I hope this helps you market your products services better…
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