When was the last time you read instructions for an item of little consequence? How about a nutrition content box of your favorite brand? Unless you are obsessive-compulsive and self-conscious about your everyday diet, chances are very rarely that you read and research everything in plain sight.
Whether this is due to information overload, timing, format, or other constraints, most advertisers have to be clear and concise in their information. In doing so, the information is placed in such a way so that the advertisers do not lose the focus of the target market they are trying to entice to buy their product or service. There have been multiple studies regarding marketing trends, from the smallest focus group for a local commodity to multi-million dollar corporations studying such things as the direction grocery shoppers do their shopping.
Marketing to the Masses.
In short, this article goes into further detail of whom a marketer is trying to attract, in what way they are being attracted, how to deduct how that marketer’s service or product is needed, and how to market that effectively.
By addressing the needs of the consumer, a business needs to identify if a need exists, and if there isn’t a need, by finding one. This typically involves a lot of steps from researching the market base, developing a product, filing patents and trademarks for said product, troubleshooting, advertising and marketing appropriately, and selling the finished product.
In short, the marketing process isn’t as simple as the list above where the last step is profit. There are many other individual steps listed within the list given above, and the last step usually doesn’t end in selling your product.
Finding a Need, Filling a Want, Establishing a Reason.
By researching a deficiency in an area, be that a service or product that may not exist yet, or entering a market that has already been developed. In either of the cases, either process a person enters into is expensive. For revolutionaries, a majority of the costs will be in regards to research and development. For up-and-comers, their main expenditure would be the amassing of capital and undercutting their competition.
The Idea.
For entrepreneurs or newly-established businesses to place themselves solidly in their niche market, they have to attend to the following: find their target market, create an idea that revolves around that market, establish the need for the idea, evolve that idea into a tangible form, patent and trademark the idea, find potential investors who are intrigued by the idea, hire focus groups for the evolved idea, further research and develop the product or service, test it in focus groups, continue development of the form, revise the idea as necessary and, depending on how poorly the idea has been developed, the person may have to start again at step one if this venture proves unsuccessful. In fact, it is common that three in ten new businesses fail within their first couple years of operation, and usually half of all businesses fail entirely.
Selling the Idea, Before Selling the Idea.
If the person selling the idea does find that he or she can move beyond these initial steps, then they can focus on getting the word out. Most businesses in the R&D phase have most of their focus groups, trial-testers, and occasionally the people they poll in generalized questions that sign a non-disclosure agreement so that their future competition does not gain the upper-hand. In this process, the researchers may introduce more test-trials concurrently with their advertising campaigns so that they can build on advertising via word-of-mouth.
While this may hurt the advantage they had with their current and future competitors, it is usually done in select areas to minimize the exposure of this service or product. Depending on how big the business is usually reflects the relation of how much of the market they corner in the subsequent years that follow in regards to their realized inspiration. A rule of thumb: it is usually better to remain restricted on materials or services in a small area rather than have a surplus in inventory or lost productivity due to having too large an area or too much product to cover effectively.
Once presence has been established, vendors can start focusing on the other aspects of marketing. Depending on how popular the item is or how much exposure the vendor wants to express in regards to their product or service is dependent on geographic location of the raw materials, geographic location of the target market, the cost and make of the packaging, cost of shelf space of local retailers or overhead of rental space for a service, determining what types of media are to be utilized in marketing the product, and other material and immaterial costs associated with their product or service.
Defining Your Target Market.
Another thing that a vendor or licensor has to focus on is the fact that they have to consider what the demographics are in terms of age, race, class, wage bracket, disposition, and other key components in their initial assessment. Sometimes the market is very specific, such as tampons for young girls or hair transplants for balding men (though not often as cliché), or the product or service could be very broad in terms of use, such as general handyman.
Key questions into what you look into your clearly defined criteria, often referred to as a target demographic, or more appropriately, target market, are typically comprised the following questions, if applicable:
- Who is my target market?
- What is my target market’s age?
- What is my target market’s gender?
- What is the target market’s religious or philosophical outlook?
- What is my target market’s race or ethnicity?
- How broad is my target market?
- Why does my target market need my product/service?
- What income bracket is my target market in?
- How do I retain my target market?
- Is my target market dependent on specific circumstances, such as their general health or the environment they are in?
- Is my service or product dependent on specific circumstances, such as their general health or the environment they are in?
- How do I price my product/service accordingly to get the most return out of my target market?
- What is the supply and demand of the target market?
- How much will it cost to mass-distribute my product/service?
- How soon will it be to mass-distribute my product/service?
- How large is the scope of my distribution?
- What is my budget?
- What are my overhead costs?
- What could my unanticipated costs look like?
- How do I market this product or service to gain or re-achieve a strategic advantage to my target market?
- What is the amount for the product or service in terms of production cost?
- What is the cost of the product or service for sale?
- What is the rate of return I wish to see on the product or service?
- Who will be my suppliers/providers for this product or service?
- Is the product or service profitable?
- What is the life of my product/service?
- How do I maintain my product/service after initial launch?
…and so on. Sometimes these case studies for target markets can span just a couple of sentences, or are lengthy enough to fill a large tome; it is not uncommon to have a typical well-prepared case study span a couple hundred pages.
I should also specify that a case study is not the same as a business model. Though they share some, if not most of the same qualities, they fall in two succinctly different categories and are utilized appropriately, though each is used fairly frequently throughout their lifespan.
Licensing the Idea.
Of course, I am thinking in the more broad term of marketing to retail chain stores and super-centers. Distribution on a more constrained, local scale often bypasses certain constraints, laws and regulations that are more congruent with mass distribution. A local retailer has less to adhere to when dealing with local retail distributer than a overseas company that has to constrain with ISO-9000 family of regulations (a set of quality management regulations which is typically honored in a large number of European nations).
At worst, overseas companies have to constrain with the local, state and national laws, ISO standards, and licensing as determined for any unions or associations found in their location for producing their product or service. This is in stark contrast to registering for a business license for a locally produced item or service for a local storefront that caters to the local populace.
An example of reduced allowance of regulations could be the local Farmer’s market in one of the many cities of around America. Since it is local produce, the growers of the assorted items typically only need a business license from the state they reside, and possibly a day vending license for when they sell their grown items along the street. If they are an organic farm, they may need additional documentation.
The Actual Selling of the Idea.
Once setting the idea into an accessible form, the vendor or provider has to release his or her item into the mainstream market. There are several options to this depending on the scope of the item, from the local mom-and-pop corner store, to multi-billion dollar national chains such as Wal-Mart or Target, to an online presence.
Most well-established businesses push their advertising in this sense as much as possible when early advertisements have the most power to maximize the exposure. This typically begins by a press release that is usually nondescript and often passed by the general populace, only being noticed in the strictest sense by their target market.
Those residing in the target market are quite often the enthusiasts of the product or service; they are typically the most loyal of future customers.
Officially Marketing to the Masses.
After you have established your target market, gone through all the legalese, determined the cost of your overhead, and all the other items prior to selling your product or service, you then have to advertise it accordingly. While I did address this partially through the word-of-mouth strategy, you have to also pay attention to how to effectively balance your marketing in relation to your time management.
If you are the only person in charge of marketing your product or service and that is not your primary duty, you can find that advertising over many venues of operation can be quite exhausting.
Earlier in this article I stated that I was not being entirely honest with you in relation to these articles. Truth be told, I am currently using these articles as a venue to “drum up” business as it were. I have a Facebook profile, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn page, a ZoomInfo account, these blog posts (which subsequently helps with Search-Engine Optimization to my own website… more on that in future articles), social groups that reside both within personal and professional realms that help my situation as a freelance worker (see this article as an example), my own marketing strategies that I will address in passing through future and past articles, and various other details.
That being said, balancing those with my own personal life actually becomes a daunting task, especially balancing budgets for your marketing. I have dues to pay, such as my web hosting, my printed materials, computer hardware and software purchases, and general overhead. Since no business can exist without a substantial investment on their said business, I have to work harder on my current commissions as well as finding new commissions to work on, ergo having to advertise more, which means more maintenance on the website, more postage for mailings and cold-calls which both eat up time and money.
Reinvestment into Your Idea
Once you determine your break-even point and receive a nice return into your investment, unless it was a one-time-deal, you have to reinvest your return back into your idea by raw materials, labor, marketing, exposure, overhead, and other related expenses.
The Time Management of Marketing and the Benefit of Balance.
Eventually I have had to find a balance between my time marketing myself, managing my commissions, and trying to have an active (yet limited) social life, in addition to such essential things such as sleep and simple errands. As explained, if you, the reader, are placed in a similar circumstance due to your entrepreneurship consisting solely of you, or simply strained in terms of your input-output ratio being skewed, it may be best to work out a calendar to help balance out your daily schedule.
The calendar I use is slightly different than the typical planner most people have in the sense that it is dynamic. I set a priority queue of importance from most to least, then by date due, by the amount of work required, then by my cost-to-return ratio.
It may sound shrewd, but when it comes down to it, in my book pro-bono and low-cost jobs simply rate lower than the ones that pay the bills. As such, most clients I have dealt with in regards to this situation have been more than understanding. In doing so, the clients I have are more inclined to return to my services, as this gives me a chance to refine any current work while they are waiting, to develop new designs for the client and have an inadvertently more polished product for the client.
As such, the client-vendor relationship has deepened due from them being a little patient. My clients receive a better product at a reduced cost, and from this relationship, I often get repeat business from past clients.
Now, not all priority lists or calendars are the same. Some use simpler dynamics, such as a static lineup such as a traditional approach such as a FIFO (First-In, First-Out) technique for their clients, while others use a complex matrix of specialized conditions that, quite simply, makes my chart look amateurish in regards to how straightforward it is. These business strategists often assess other qualities and fine points to encompass as many issues that may arise, such as risk assessment, differentials, worst and best outcome scenarios, and other criteria depending on the scope of the business.
Step X: Profit
As many of you readers have come to the same conclusion, by now you are probably asking yourself “When do I profit?”
While most companies, as stated earlier, are prone to failing, a lot of the reason most companies succeed is the inherent preparation one invests in their dream. If you do not have that interest and determination to see your idea succeed, then you are most likely going to be one of the businesses that fail. Granted, there is the rare exception to this rule, but they are few and far between.
Case-in-point, when I first started writing this article, I did it before reading articles such as this, this, this, this, and most importantly, this. With the exception of having a website (depending on what service or product you offer, you may not need one, though I do highly recommend it in this day and age), I covered every single point addressed in the articles above in varying degrees (for those of you whom are interested in setting up a website, future articles will address this issue).