Marketing is all about reaching people who are looking for your product or service. It’s about identifying who these people are and finding where these people hang out. This is known as your target market. To begin, you need to define your target market. Who are they? Where are they? Marketing budgets have limits therefore one needs to be very specific about what the target market looks like. In this search you need to get down to specifics. The buzz word nowadays is “Avatar”. It’s all about creating a very clear description of your perfect customer – your customer Avatar. Be able to visualise the make-up of this person. Give them a personality. Give them a name.
Spend a week or more thinking about this. Discuss it with your staff and get everyone contributing. Create a list of bullet points to describe your Avatar. This exercise will provide focus to your marketing strategies because now you will be exploring where to find your ideal customers and where they go to look for products or services like yours.
Becoming noticed by your Avatars is like conducting an orchestra. You have many different sections in play out in the marketplace and they all come together for the big crescendo of your Avatar interacting with you for a sale. Imagine being in a large shopping mall and walking around the mall are violinists, everywhere, playing beautiful Beatles classics. All the violinists are wearing T shirts promoting your product – that is advertising.
While this is happening, in walks the brass section blowing their trumpets, pointing their trombones at passers-by, huffing on their horns, while the crew accompanying them are giving out brochures. This is promotion.
Next the percussion section walks in, disrupting the whole mall with their drums banging, cymbals clashing, along with tambourines, gongs and chimes combining to make a general commotion. That’s what we call publicity.
Finally, the woodwind section drifts through the mall with the playful sounds of the piccolo, the quieting melodies of the flutes & clarinets as well as the calming tones of the oboes & bassoons, settling everyone down to reflect on the excitement that has all just occurred. This we call public relations.
You the business owner, the conductor, are waiting in the centre of the mall where all the sections meet for one coordinated performance. This we call marketing, the grand finale of which, is the sale. The success of the sale comes from all the planning by the conductor. What seems like different groups causing chaos, is really a co-ordinated plan leading to a finale. The sole reason for the meticulous planning being a great experience for the customer.
Marketing is really a strategy combining the different groups of advertising, promotion, publicity and public relations, all planned to achieve a customer experience.