Understanding your target market and developing key marketing strategies that will drive results.
As a sales or marketing professional, one of the most important aspects of your position or your company’s position is to understand your target market, or that marketplace in which your products will make the biggest impact.
TARGET MARKETING STRATEGY
Identifying Competitors
Once you have identified your target market, then you need to understand who your competitors are. The more knowledge you have about your competitors, the more equipped you will be to market and sell your services effectively to their clients. The knowledge you have about your competitors and how you use that knowledge will be either to your advantage or disadvantage, depending on how you market your services.
Advertising Avenues
The key to telling your story in the marketplace is to advertise effectively. Conduct necessary research to ascertain where your customers are reading about the latest trends in the marketplace, and ensure your advertising methods meet your customers where they are. Direct mail, email, fax blasts, trade magazine advertising, radio, TV, collateral pieces, and trade shows are some of the many examples that companies can use to advertise themselves effectively.
Marketing Campaign and Strategy
Develop a marketing strategy that will carry your message to the streets and support your sales team’s selling efforts. An effective marketing campaign both brings leads and enables your sales representatives to sell to more qualified leads proactively. Sit down and determine the message that will bring the biggest impact to your target customers, and develop an effective, long-term marketing campaign that will carry that message to the marketplace.
Product Knowledge
Understanding your own products and the value they bring to the marketplace is critical to developing effective marketing practices. Your product line is your best offense when facing your competition, so it is critical that your marketing department positions your products to their best selling advantage. Your marketing department needs to make sure that the key benefits of your product or service line are well-known to the sales department, and that they are the focus of all marketing campaigns.
Industry Knowledge
Understanding your industry is critical to marketing effectively to the marketplace. Staying on top of industry trends will enable you to create newer, fresher products that hit the market more quickly and impact-fully than your competitors. Also, knowing the resources to use such as trade magazines, industry-focused websites, trade forums, and industry experts will help you most effectively keep abreast of all that is going on in the industry.
Overall
Target marketing means simply to identify the marketplace in which you can sell most effectively, and develop key marketing campaigns and strategies to tell your story while effectively supporting the sales team.
