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Effective Marketing for Your Company
Uses Market Research
A large part of effective
marketing is analysis. Effective marketing involves understanding the
product or service you sell, its unique features, its strengths and
weaknesses. It involves understanding your customers, their values,
habits, needs, likes, dislikes and financial resources.
It also rests on a good understanding of the market environment, likely
business opportunities and threats from competitors. It involves
assessing your product or service’s current market position, setting
precise objectives to improve that position, and then making
measurements of how successful your campaign has been.
The last factor – measurement - is a key part of marketing. You are
likely to waste the marketing dollars you spend on hunches and
instincts, unless you back them up by solid research and statistics.
Unless you measure your marketing campaigns, you won’t know if you have
been wasting money.
Marketing can involve some fairly complex mathematical analysis,
particularly in the field of statistics. But even simple analysis can be
useful.
For example, say a restaurant wants to increase its profile in the local
community. Before spending money on a marketing campaign, the restaurant
should determine what its current profile is. It might do this by
surveying shoppers in a local mall, perhaps asking them to name three
local restaurants.
The relative number of times the restaurant gets mentioned should give a
rough idea of where it stands in relation to its competitors. (This is
based on the assumption that the people in the mall make a
representative sample of the restaurant’s customer base.)
The restaurant could then carry out it its marketing campaign, followed
by a similar survey. It can judge the effectiveness of the campaign,
based on the percentage increase of awareness in the second survey.
If there is no increase or only a small increase, the business knows
that it needs to take a good look at its marketing strategy and reassess
where it can spend money effectively.
Of course, this assumes that other factors are not in play. If your
competitors are simultaneously making a big marketing push, your
business may face an uphill battle. You will struggle to increase your
market share when there is tough competition. In that case, successful
marketing might mean just holding ground against your competition.
Equally, sales can go up and down irrespective of marketing. You may
find that there is a big sales increase after your marketing campaign,
but the increase may merely reflect a seasonal upturn in business.
The key to cost-effective marketing is narrowing down the target range.
A business rarely has the whole local community as its potential
customers. The more precisely you can identify your (potential)
customers, the more accurately you can direct your marketing.
You can segment your customers by a variety of criteria – geography,
disposable income, gender, hobbies, age or occupation, to name a few. A
golf accessories store might analyze its customer data, and find that a
certain percentage of its customers are retirees. It might then mount a
marketing campaign with the specific goal of increasing business with
that age group.
Being specific will help you make your marketing more effective. With a
particular audience in mind, you will be able to target particular
publications, radio stations or websites that will reach that group of
people.
By focusing on particular objectives, you can more easily measure how
effective your marketing has been. For example, you can monitor sales
levels among the target group in the months following the campaign. You
can also carry out customer surveys to find out how much of the campaign
has reached your target group.
Keep in mind that marketing is more effective where it is methodical,
follows strategic thinking, and is based on measurable facts and
figures.
Useful Web resources include:
Americas:
International Market Research Mall
The Basics of Conducting Market Research in Canada
Europe:
The Market Research Society
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