Believe it or not, but I have seen so many Internet marketing efforts undertaken without the fundamental knowledge necessary to make these efforts as cost effective as they should be. It is the old adage of using a shotgun approach when a rifle approach will do less damage to the client’s pocket book. It is amazing to me that many people who design and market websites don’t understand that Internet Marketing is a subset of “Marketing.” We must understand the marketing environment of the client. I surely wish every organization that needed Internet marketing either already had a marketing plan or would create one prior to implementing Internet marketing strategies. I rejoice when asked to create a marketing plan because it should provide all of the information needed to design a website and implement Internet marketing strategies. Unfortunately that is a rare occurrence. Even large organizations often have a disconnect between a marketing plan (if it exists) and their online efforts. So let’s assume, that a marketing plan doesn’t exist. Like I mentioned in the last blog, I assume that you have a good product or service and that their is a market for it for the purpose of this discussion.
Where do you start? You start with the customer!
Marketing starts with the customer and an insightful understanding of who they are (demographics); where they are (trading area); and how they think and behave (psychographics). Our goal is to spend our efforts targeting those who are most likely to “buy.” Hacking our wares to the most probable customers for our product or service increases the return of investment (ROI) for our marketing efforts. This is our target market. While we may also market to other markets who may also buy, so call flanker markets, it is our target market that is where we get our most bang for the buck. Not enough is typically done to understand the customer, including others who might be involved in the buying process. In most larger organizations someone recommends the purchase of a product or service while someone else must approve it. Everyone in that buying process is the “customer.” and we must have a good understanding of them if we are to devise marketing strategies. These larger organization have a longer sales cycle and we will need to nurture them through that process (future discussion).
Our deliverable should be profile, i.e., a description in both demographic and psychographic terms of the typical or average person in a market segment. We should do this for the targeted (primary) market as well as any identified secondary (flanker) markets. We can use primary (our own) research and understanding of the market or secondary (research done by others) to gain access to the information we need. In the Internet world we often see the term “personnas” as a sustitute for profile. In most cases I have seen, the personnas is typically a demongraphic profile, rather than the complete profile needed to formulate a marketing campaign.
In my next installment we will discuss demographic and psychographic profiles and their impact on getting people to take the online action we require.
Tags: Brand + Technology, Internet Marketing, Non Linear Internet Marketing, Online Marketing