“Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably” – Chartered Institute of Marketing.

At first glance marketing can appear to be a complicated and disheartening subject, but marketing only has to be as complicated as you make it, sure, there are marketing elements which do require specialised experts but there are many elements of marketing.

“Marketing is really good common sense supported by technical understanding” – Chris Reeves.

Where to start?

Ok, so you’ve got a great product and great idea but then you realise, how am I going to get this message out there? Thankfully, we’re here to help with a few great starting principles to help set your marketing in motion.

Test and Measure

I cannot stress how important this principle is. Everything you do in marketing must be measurable. If you don’t measure, how will you know what worked? How will you be able to make an informed decision?

Once you know what works, you can reinvest, step up your marketing efforts and test something new.

There’s no such thing as a failure

As long as you test and measure there’s no such thing as a failed campaign, just a bad result. With data, you can look into each specific campaign to identify why something did or didn’t work, so you know what to do more or less of to improve your campaign next time.

Who’s my target market?

I’ve come across many businesses who when asked ‘Who is your target market?’ answer ‘everyone…’.  What they’re really saying is: “I feel my product can benefit everyone who uses it, and well, everyone can use it”.

Your product might be suitable for ‘everyone’ but if you were to separate everyone into groups, you’ll soon see they all have different wants and needs. You need to identify which group is your ‘perfect customer’ and create a message that drives relevant engagement from them; address your customers ‘hot points’.

Your message

You need to establish what your marketing message is.

Your marketing message grabs your target markets attention, tells them how you can solve their problems, why they should trust you and answers why they should buy with you over your competitors.

Note: Your marketing message will vary slightly depending on the medium used to carry it.

Your marketing message will typically answer:

• What problem does your product solve?
  
• Why I should buy this product?
• Why should I buy this product from you? (Instead of your competition).
• Can you provide proof that your product works?
• Have you provided a compelling call to action?

The mediums

Once you’ve established your target market and core marketing message you next need to decide which marketing mediums you’re going to use.

There are hundreds of different ways to market your products and these vary from business to business, so your first step should be to list all of the different mediums that come to mind, once complete, you need to work through this list and prioritise which you will start testing first, consider:

• How much time does this medium need?
  
• Do I have the skills and ability to test this medium or do I need to outsource?
• What is the budget I’m looking to spend on this medium?
• Can I test and measure the results accurately?
• What period of time am I going to test this medium over?

Once you’ve confirmed which mediums you are going to use map these out on your calendar to co-ordinate your efforts on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Happy Marketing!

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