Benefits of Market Research for Small Businesses
Market research is the objective collection of data that can indicate whether a business is using best practices in order to be successful. While it is a little extra work for business owners, the ongoing process of market research definitely benefits any company in the long run. Read more
Targeting Your Social Media Efforts
Whether you like it or not social media has become a piece of the marketing puzzle and can be a great way to reach your target audience on a more personable level. But before you start making Facebook fan pages and YouTube channels, you should do some research on who and what people are looking for when they go to these sites.
A Look at The Numbers
A study done by Chitika, a full service online advertising network, has broken down the users of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Digg. They found that an overwhelming 47% of Twitter users go there to find news, while 51% of MySpace users are there for either video games or celebrity/entertainment purposes. Twenty-eight percent of Facebook users go there for the news, while Digg seemed to be distributed evenly between news, tech, and video games.
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These types of numbers are important to know where to target your social media efforts. Having a game plan is half the battle—for both offline and online marketing. It seems that many marketers are starting to realize that social media is important, they just don’t exactly know what to do with it yet.
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Another study conducted by Econsultancy and Bigmouthmedia concluded that 86% of the companies they surveyed said they wanted to allocate more money to social media, but not sure what to do with their findings once on these sites. Knowing why people are going to these networks can help with this.
Find Your Target
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Once you target your efforts and know exactly why your customers are going to these sites, the easier it will be to give the information they want. Since 47% of Twitter users are there for news, have your Twitter updates be more information based. Your tweets may not have to be all informational, but give the people what they want.
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If you apply your knowledge of traditional marketing strategies to social media you can be very successful. You wouldn’t run an advertisement for makeup on a channel predominantly watched by males—so why would you create a YouTube Channel if no one is interested there?
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Research is half the battle in marketing, the same goes for social media. It can be very beneficial for companies when used right, it just takes some planning and research first. Tackle it like you would other traditional marketing tactics and you should see some success.
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About the Author: Shannon Suetos is an expert writer on phone systems based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as VoIP Service at Resource Nation.
Photo Credit: Bogdan Suditu
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Stop! Don’t Spend One Advertising Dollar Until You Read This
Don’t spend one single dollar on advertising until you know your target customer, inside and out, top to bottom. Period, end of discussion. Why draw a hard line on this?
Precision Trumps Plentiful Marketing
Too often businesses use the shotgun approach to marketing, and in this economy that’s wasted money. Sure if you blast off a bunch of advertising you’re bound to hit something, but how much ammo did you waste in the process?
Right now we probably don’t have the marketing budgets to try stuff out, see what works, and throw money around hoping to hit a buyer.
Wouldn’t it be better to know your target customer so well you can then advertise specifically to them – the people most likely to buy your stuff? I think so. You’ll get more sales with less money, and an overall higher ROI for your efforts if you are precise in your marketing efforts, not just plentiful.
Exercise
Imagine your perfect customer. Think about every single element of the perfect person to buy what you sell. Then answer the following
- Where do they live?
- What do they do for a living?
- How much do they earn?
- Do they have children?
- Did they go to college?
- Have a particular educational background?
- What do they do for fun?
- Who are their friends?
- Who are their influencers?
- What matters to them?
- What do they value?
- What do they want?
- What do they need?
Once you have a crystal clear picture of who your perfect customer is, you can go to the places they are most likely to see your advertising.
Pay Attention (For What Not To Do)
In the next week pay attention to what kinds of advertising you are seeing, and where. You’ll be surprised how often you’ll see the shotgun approach being used, even by the “big guys”. This won’t be you.
The random ad for eyebrow waxing on gardening website, the flier on your door to refinance when you live in an apartment, or the commercial midway through your favorite episode of “Golden Girls” for Budweiser are all examples of using a shotgun approach to advertising. Sure they may accidentally hit on someone interested in an ice cold Bud who also watches “Golden Girls”, but it’s also an inefficient way to go about things.
Be cognizant of this when you are rolling out advertising. If you can’t explain exactly what demographic and target market you hope to reach with your ads, put your wallet back in your pants.
Not Just Who, But How
Also think about how your customer likes to be marketed to – don’t send brochures to "on line" people, radio ads are lost if your target customer subscribes to XM Radio, and if your target customer values outdoor activities how much sense does a commercial make?
Get the "how" right and you’ll be saving yourself some money, and getting directly in front of those most likely to buy what you’re selling. Tailor your message to what you know about them, what they value, and what the benefit of your product is to them. Most of all be consistent, both in message and in frequency.
Put the Time In
Do this exercise and you’ll be giving yourself, and your limited marketing dollars, a chance to really work. Without a lot of money you need to be selective, don’t use a shotgun approach hoping something will resonate with your target audience, put time into knowing them before you spend a dime.
Photo Credit: sk8geek
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The Truth Behind Marketing
Business owners should have only one goal – Get your products and services in front of your target market. The more people to see what you do, the more sales you will make. This means essentially all businesses are in the marketing and advertising business. How well you do, or don’t, market your products will make or break you.
As the following slideshow points out one important factor in effective marketing is to cut through the clutter.
Your advertising should be:
- Clear, consistent, and concise
- Allow for intelligent interaction
- Focused on the customer, not you
- Don’t blame the medium
- Answer “why”, less who, what, when, where
- Tell your clients what they need to hear, not what they want to hear
- Respect the law of seedtime and harvest
For a graphical look at the Truth Behind Marketing, take a minute of your time today to go through the following presentation. It just may change your thinking on how you bring your products and services to your consumers.
Photo credit: Takadanobaba (Back From Tokyo)’s photostream
