The Secrets of Successful Marketing Ravenglass

What do you think are the secrets of good marketing?   Good advertising? Effective press releases?  Quality brochures?  Targeted direct mail?  Special offers?  Great products?  A good website?   Well maybe… but without the secrets I’m going to share in this article all of these things can fail.   So what are the real secrets of successful marketing?   Well I believe there are 6 secrets and they apply whatever your product or service and whichever industry or service sector you operate in. They apply for large and small companies alike and if you learn the secrets and apply them to your marketing activities you can reap the rewards.   Secret No. 1 – Know Your Audience   In marketing speak this is all about identifying your target market and segmenting that market until you identify a group of like minded individuals or organisations that share common characteristics.  For example in the car market a simple segmentation might identify the following segments:

• Family users - looking for seating capacity, boot space, price, fuel economy and safety
• Run around users – where fuel economy, small size will be important
• Business and executive users – for whom appearance, reliability and status could be critical

In real terms this is all about getting a really good understanding of the market for your product and identifying the characteristics of the people or businesses in that market.   Ask yourself some questions and consider things like:

• What are their needs and wants?  Make sure you know what these are by asking people in your target market – don’t make assumptions.
• What are their priorities?  So going back to the car example – although the family car buyer might want status and appearance when you knuckle down to things these factors are often outweighed by the practical points of how many passengers the vehicle will comfortably seat and the price bracket they are trying to buy within. 
• In the business to business market it’s important to get under the skin of what the personal (as well as the business) priorities are of the buyer.  If someone’s in line for promotion you might be able to deliver a good solution that they can take credit for or offer added value services which allows them to impress their bosses.
• What external factors affect your target market?  How do changes in the economy, interest rate changes and the performance of international markets affect your target market?  If you don’t know you could be making all kinds of mistakes in your marketing – and wasting a lot of money.  What social and environmental factors impact on your customers and prospects?  How ‘green’ and socially aware are they – will they respond well to a product or service because it’s something they can ‘believe in’ or th...

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