Everyday Marketing Ideas

Marketing-Strategy Essentials

It’s a common mistake of smaller businesses to believe that only large corporations need to have a profound understanding of their market, their competitors, and the demographics and psychographics of their customer base. Often, this is driven by the sheer necessity to keep expenses low and also by just not knowing, what they dont know.

For every business, it is essential to know and understand their market intimately, know their potential customers, as well the competitive environment. How can you perform your research? Assuming that you have a business selling a product or service already in demand (or in other words: there is already a market for it), here is what you can do:

Start your research by having a close look at your existing competitors. You will be surprised how much information you will get by just showing up at their place and asking questions:

- Ask them about their business.

- Check out their offering and pricing.

- What kind of specials do they have?

- Ask even about their revenue per month.

- Check out their sales peoplehow good are they?

- Ask about the market sizethe more competitors you ask the closer you come to the true market size.

- Ask them which one of their competitors they fear the most.

- Watch how they are doing business: Check their strengths and their weaknesses.

- Find out as much as you can about their customers: Who are they? Where are they located? Check the demographics. What do they like the most and what dont they like?

Of course, your local chamber of commerce is also a great resource you should use.

Do your research also in the internet and for similar markets. What is out there already and what is about to come into the market? How do the trends develop?

Assuming that you have your Vision and Mission statements in place, you can now work on your marketing strategies taking into account your research results. And once you have done that it will become clear to you what actions you need to take in order to succeed. Write these actions down, put a deadline next to it and as well who is performing the action. Keep track of your actions taken and measure the resultsthen adjust accordingly. Nothing can be more obsolete that yesterdays assumptionsso dont fall in love with them.

Walter H. Groth