Niche Marketing Matters

Are we in a recession? It’s a technical issue for the economists to debate, but it is clearly a tough economy for many of us. So, what should you differently in this environment?

Here are a few thoughts on what to do differently:

1. Advertise. If you read this blog with any regularity, you know that I am very critical of advertising (lots of money for little reward). Yet, in a down market, people cut back on advertising budgets. This creates an opportunity for those who continue to advertise since their messages have a greater likelihood to be seen or heard.

2. Don’t raise prices. Instead focus on increasing value. You can get the price increases later. During a recession customers become more value oriented and thus can be fickle. Give them reasons to stay with your product or service.

3. Offer price promotions and special incentives. New customers can be more easily lured away from the competition during tough times. Do it.

4. Re-evaluate the design and usability of your website. Make it easy for people to do business with your firm buy having a friendly website which helps them solve their problems. A good rule of thumb is to review your site for relevance and usability every 12-18 months with a redesign a likely outcome

5. Search Engine Optimization. Consider the addition of a SEO consultant to help optimize your site for the search engines. It will be money well spent.

6. Exploit your competitors’ weaknesses. It is legend that a recession is a great time to take market share. Your strength could be a key message in your advertising message.

7. Kill low performing products. Don’t waste your marketing dollars on products that don’t sell. Prune your product line.

8. Invest in social media. While the commercial use of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter has been modest, forecasts are that this is how we will communicate and sell to our customers in the near future. Don’t hesitate.

Recession? Don’t let it stop you from marketing.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

Small companies don’t have to invest in expensive marketing efforts to be successful. There are many things you can do to drive new business that are free or inexpensive.

Here are a few 8 ideas to consider:

1. Make sure that your website is bursting with useful content for your readers and customers; give them a reason to come back to your site.

2. E-mail newsletters can be a great tool to stay in touch with your customer list. I recommend that you send this newsletter quarterly since email databases can go stale quickly. The bounce-backs need to be removed from your list and replaced with current email addresses.

3. Reciprocal links can increase search engine rank, so be sure to post links of your business partners on your website. For this to work, they have to reciprocate and post your URL.

4. eBay can be a great alternative channel for distribution. You can move old merchandise and drive traffic to your store or website.

5. Cross links are similar to reciprocal links with the difference being that you own the other site. This technique applies to people who have multiple websites. Beyond just the link, you can also cross advertise.

6. Article marketing is a great tool to promote yourself as an expert. Check out www.ezinearticles.com.

7. Press releases can be sent to your media list and customers to build awareness. PR is 7-10 times more effective than advertising.

8. Your signature line helps people stay in touch with you so be sure to include your name, title, company, address, email, and phone. Duh!

Marketing can be free or inexpensive.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

I am frequently asked about the difference between selling and marketing.

Academically speaking, selling is a function of marketing, as is advertising, promotion, and pricing. Practically speaking, marketing is what happens before the phone rings and selling is what happens after you answer the phone. Marketing is all about understanding the customer’s needs, figuring out how to get the message out, and negotiating the competitive landscape. Selling is all about the needs of the firm and is product focused; the desired outcome is financial in nature.

Part of the confusion about the definitions of the terms is how corporate America tends to treat marketing and sales organizationally. Many firms tend to align marketing with the manufacturing operation, while disassociating the marketing function from the sales organization.

The marketing organization tends to be lower paid, more technical, and is considered a staff function; the sales organization tends to be higher paid, more gregarious, and remotely located from the manufacturing plant. A chasm is created between the sales and marketing teams by this organizational design.

Instead of working as a team to serve the client, marketing and sales do combat about what is right for the customer and which team should control the decision-making authority. Thus, the debate about what is sales and what is marketing is rooted in the politics of corporate America. Luckily, small and medium sized businesses can organize sales and marketing as one department to avoid this type of conflict.

A little bit of philosophy: think marketing first, then sales. Marketing asks you to first think about the needs of the customer; selling often asks you to focus on your offering.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2007 All rights reserved.

I am normally skeptical of free offers, but this one is legitimate.

As a thank you to all my readers, please download this free e-book called “The Secrets of Market-Driven Leaders” by Craig Stull, Phil Myers and David Meerman Scott (for the download go http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/secrets).

This free e-book is about why some products and companies fail, where others succeed. Based on surveys spanning 3,000 companies, 40,000 individuals and one-on-one interviews with 30 technology CEOs, the authors found seven consistent success factors related to company culture, management style, and product & marketing strategies that propelled the winners. And also the seven fatal flaws that derail market laggards.

Consistently winning is hard to do. This book suggests that you should focus on the market, rather than the customer or the competition or just making money. Counter to a lot of business press advice, the book has the research to back up its claims.

Thanks again for reading my blog and supporting this site.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2006 All rights reserved.
My new book “First, Best, or Different” is now available at www.firstbestordifferent.com!
Please buy my book!

Positioning is what the customer believes about your product’s value, features, and benefits; it is a comparison to the other available alternatives offered by the competition. These beliefs tend to based on customer experiences and evidence, rather than awareness created by advertising or promotion.

Marketers manage product positioning by focusing their marketing activities on a positioning strategy. Pricing, promotion, channels of distribution, and advertising all are geared to maximize the chosen positioning strategy.

Generally, there are six basic strategies for product positioning:

1. By attribute or benefit- This is the most frequently used positioning strategy. For a light beer, it might be that it tastes great or that it is less filling. For toothpaste, it might be the mint taste or tartar control.
2. By use or application- The users of Apple computers can design and use graphics more easily than with Windows or UNIX. Apple positions its computers based on how the computer will be used.
3. By user- Facebook is a social networking site used exclusively by college students. Facebook is too cool for MySpace and serves a smaller, more sophisticated cohort. Only college students may participate with their campus e-mail IDs.
4. By product or service class- Margarine competes as an alternative to butter. Margarine is positioned as a lower cost and healthier alternative to butter, while butter provides better taste and wholesome ingredients.
5. By competitor- BMW and Mercedes often compare themselves to each other segmenting the market to just the crème de la crème of the automobile market. Ford and Chevy need not apply.
6. By price or quality- Tiffany and Costco both sell diamonds. Tiffany wants us to believe that their diamonds are of the highest quality, while Costco tells us that diamonds are diamonds and that only a chump will pay Tiffany prices.

Positioning is what the customer believes and not what the provider wants them to believe. Positioning can change due the counter measures taken at the competition. Managing your product positioning requires that you know your customer and that you understand your competition; generally, this is the job of market research not just what the enterpreneur thinks is true.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2006 All rights reserved
Please visit my website at www.firstbestordifferent.com

The marketing mix or the “4 Ps” were coined by author E. Jerome McCarthy in the 1950s and they are marketing gospel today: product, place, price, and promotion.

• Product is the goods, services, or solutions that the provider delivers. This is really the end game for the entrepreneur since it is all about the customer and not the product, but more to come on that later.
• Place is the way or the method that you get your product, service, or solution to the customer. This could be a retail store, a website, or a sales representative.
• Price is the financial exchange for the value that the provider delivers to the customer. The customer deems that the price is right or fair and that your product is worth it. Implicit in this transaction is the fact the customer chose your product instead of the competitor’s offering.
• Promotion is the how you get the message to the customer. In the broadest sense, this includes publicity, advertising, and public relations.

For the entrepreneur, the challenge is to adjust this mix of marketing tools to accommodate the changing needs of the competitive environment. For example, pricing might need to be reduced in response to competitive pressures. Alternatively, more advertising might be required to create awareness of the product.

Candidly, the 4 Ps are a bit out of date. The 4 Ps look at marketing from the provider’s point of view rather than from the customer perspective. In the new millennium, the customer is in charge and demands to be served their way, when they want it, and where they want. Got it?

Dr. Bob Lauterborn, a professor at the University of North Carolina, gets it. He thinks that we need to toss out the 4 Ps. He contends that there are actually 4 Cs:

• Consumer Wants and Needs–Instead of products first, you need to find what the customer wants and then create the product, service, or solution. This makes too much sense. It is all about the customer, not the solution.
• Cost to Satisfy–Instead of price, think like the customer does. Customers ask the question, “What will it cost me to be satisfied and get what I need”. The customer will pay a fair price for a fair deal.
• Convenience to Buy–Instead of place, the more pertinent question is how and where does the customer want to purchase? This question is getting tougher to answer with increasingly segmented consumer markets, the worldwide web, and the global economy.
• Communication–Instead of promotion, which stinks of manipulation or greed, you need to ask the customer questions and listen. Blasting the airwaves with a repetitive advertisement does not work anymore, since the customer is numb from too much advertising, while being more sophisticated than past generations. Customers have access to nearly as much information as providers, much to the consternation of the providers.

The 4 Cs make more sense to me.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2006 All rights reserved.
Please visit my website at www.firstbestordifferent.com