(OCALA, FL) 352today – Marketing for Small and Medium Size Businesses (SMBs) doesn’t need to be complicated. There are many marketing models SMBs use, and some use no marketing strategy at all. Here is one simple 5-step process to build a plan for your business:
Who Do You Want?
Sometimes called the target audience, this is the consumer you seek most. They are the heavy users of what you offer. Age, gender, life group and many other characteristics can be used to define who your ideal customer or client is. Mark’s Prime and Texas Roadhouse each offer a selection of steaks, but the target consumer for each is naturally quite different. The more descriptive you can be to define your ideal customer, the closer you will be able to define the center of the bullseye. Resist the easy temptation to say “everyone is my customer.” That is rarely true.
What Do They Want?
This is sometimes called benefits sought. What is most important to that ideal customer or client and what they are seeking? Price, convenience, quality and other considerations are ways the consumer evaluates a business before making a purchase decision. Someone who wants to have a clean car at a reasonable price is likely to use a drive-through carwash like Race Wash. Another customer seeks a mobile detail business that can come to their workplace to detail their car while they work. Price is much less of a consideration. Each car wash and detail business is served well by knowing exactly what their core customer expects from them.
Who Else Offers What You Do?
Also called a competitive analysis, this is a simple grid used to analyze how your business stacks up amongst your competitors. List your competitors across the top, and list the most important benefits the target customer is seeking down the left side. Create a grid, and score every business – including yours – on each benefit sought. You can spend money on research for this, or you can make an honest attempt to score each business and benefit yourself.
What Do You Win?
This is the basis for your position. Your messaging should emphasize the benefits you offer better than competitors. This is the position you can own in the mind of your consumer, because no other competitor can do this better than you. It needs to be significant to the consumer, clearly differentiate you from competitors and it must be credible. An old example you may remember is when FedEx used the positioning statement, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” FedEx owned this position at the time.
Where Do You Communicate?
This is the advertising and promotion step of the process. When you have completed steps 1-4 in that order, now is the time to choose the media that will deliver your message to the target consumer. This completes your SMB Marketing Plan.
A final thought: think about the difference between strategy and tactics. Marketing strategy answers the question why consumers should buy from you. Marketing tactics answer the question why buy now. Be careful to consider that tactics can support and enhance your strategy; ignore your strategy; or undermine your strategy. Choose wisely.