In an anecdote often used in marketing, two sales representatives of a shoe company were sent on an assignment to explore opportunities in a country their company aims to establish a market. The first sales representative reported ‘’everyone goes barefoot in the country, hence, no market there for us at all’’. The second representative reported ‘’everyone goes barefoot in the country, hence, there is a massive opportunity for us there’’.
Both representatives were presented with the same fact but one saw a challenge and the other saw an opportunity. Generally, whether one sees a challenge or an opportunity in a situation depends on one’s capacity to connect the dots.
There is also a saying which goes thus; have a market before a product. To the neophyte, this often sounds self-contradictory since one without a sellable product has no business with the market in the first place. However, a proper way to look at it is this; to win a market, one needs to identify a gap in the market and develop appropriate solutions into sellable products or services.
The first bold step is profiling your target market based on the existing relationship between demand and supply. What are people demanding that are not being met in the right quantity and quality? The entrepreneur identifies and profiles his target market in terms of their existing and emerging needs and how he can efficiently provide services or products that meet these needs.
Who are my target audience? What do they want or need? How can I efficiently provide values that meet their needs? Answering these questions aptly informs a good marketing strategy and provides a leverage to navigate or sift through the market noises.
When analyzing who your target market is, you can categorize people based on how regularly they buy from you; the sort of product they buy; their motives of buying your products or services; and their purchasing power or budget limit.
The next step is to concentrate your marketing strategies on a specific market categorization or profiling to generate prospects or leads. Here, it is important to ask if your business depends on the quantity or the quality of your prospects. Quantity is seldom preferred to quality. Quality leads have greater chances to convert into sales based on your knowledge and profiling of your customers.
Your marketing strategy must be developed based on insights and cues from your target audience. It is believed that speaking first to a representative of your target audience before you develop your marketing strategy will enable you to ascertain the veracity of your target market profiling and test your assumption about what you think they want and why they could buy from you.
How you communicate your business proposition to your target audience also really matters. Business communication must be done in a language the target audience understands and that appeals to their experience and sentiments. Ask, will these communications convince them that your service can provide the benefits that meet their needs?
Being clear about what your target audience want and need and exactly what it is you are going to offer to them will enable you to develop the specific marketing message and proposition that will most effectively sell the benefits of your product or service to them.
Lastly, producing in the right quantity and quality that meet your customers demand in a timely manner and at an affordable price is nonnegotiable to maintain your customers’ trust and loyalty and develop goodwill over a long period of time.
Resources:
Good Small Business Guide 2012: How to start and grow your own business. Bloomsbury
