Marketing can be defined as the activity, set of institutions which include processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that add value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.
The Basics of Marketing
The marketing comprises of strategies for small businesses that can be used to communicate and persuade the customers. These strategies include paid advertising, event appearances, public relations campaigns, online traffic, social media, email promotions and many more.
In a world full of innovations which are at the forefront of community engagement, Digital marketing will be a constantly changing field. Every Marketing Agency in Mumbai focuses their marketing efforts on SEO and marketing strategies, there is a possibility of forgetting the marketing basics. It is important to have digital capability, but if companies can’t pass Basic Marketing, then it would prove difficult to come on top.
Each of these marketing tools and strategies helps to connect with a variety of customers and it helps to reach different number of people, and costs a different amount to execute. Due to this, every individual business will need a different mix of tools to create an effective marketing strategy.
There are four ways through which an effective marketing mix leads to business growth:
- Acquire more customers
- Persuade each customer to buy profitable products
- Persuade each customer to buy more than one product
- Persuade customers to buy more expensive products or up-selling each customer
Each of these options helps in increasing your revenue and profit. The final three depend on the first. Before you decide to persuade customers to change their buying patterns, initially you will have to first acquire those customers.
The Importance of Target Market
It is necessary to understand target marketing before you start acquiring customers based on knowing and understanding them.
For any business, only a small portion of the buying population will turn into customers. Effective marketing speaks directly to the concerns, needs and values of target market. Otherwise, you waste your time, money and other resources when you are trying to attract consumers who might never turn into your customers.
The demographics of any target market will impact every choice you make in your marketing strategy. Understanding your customers needs will help you answer questions about your marketing choices like:
- What language to use in your ads, slogans, tagline and other messaging?
- Which media platforms to use for advertising?
- What keywords to target in your web content and search engine optimization?
- Are there any businesses that you can partner with?
- Are there sponsorship or community outreach choices available that can help you gain your customers’ attention and goodwill?
- Can you offer any sales, promotions or discounts?
- How to interact with customers in order to make sales and distribute your products?
For each and every marketing choices, understanding the target customer helps you to in making effective choices. If you face difficulties answering any of these questions, you need to conduct market research. This can help you understand the target market, which will then inform your marketing choices.
Presenting Your Value Proposition
Once you become aware of your target customers are and how can you reach them, you then need to present them with your value proposition which is referred to as a unique selling proposition or USP.
This statement is considered as the core of your business and marketing strategy. It is a way to promise your customers that outlines what you are offering, how will the customers benefit and why is your business best to choose.
Creating a strong value proposition depends on understanding your customers while considering your competition. To convince customers to choose your business over your competitor, you need to demonstrate the benefits that are willing to provide. These benefits can be in many forms such as accessibility, price, status and/or value.
Once you define your value proposition, it should be at the core of each and every marketing message you use to communicate with your customers.
Making a Small Business Marketing on Budget
Marketing Agency in Mumbai work with a budget. Unlike other businesses who afford to try multiple expensive marketing strategies to find the best one, small businesses have to become creative and careful with all of their marketing choices.
In addition to the traditional advertising methods which includes both online and offline, small businesses have to use effective and budget-conscious marketing tactics which are as follows:
- Asking vendors/associates to participate in co-op advertising.
- Sending referral and buying incentives to existing customers
- Using various websites to appear in the media and position as an expert in your field
- Piggybacking on local events in order to interact with prospective customers in or out of your place of business.
- Sponsoring any event, sports team or charity drives.
The other effective way through which you can market a small business with limited budget constraints is by creating a well-rounded program combining sales activities with your marketing strategies. Combining the two will result in reduction of your out-of-pocket marketing expense and it can help in adding valuable interaction with your prospective customers and clients. This kind of interaction will help you provide you with insight into their needs, concerns and values.
Wherever you decide to choose to spend your marketing budget, you need to create a way to track each campaign with tools like coded ads, a dedicated landing pages or phone numbers or maybe simply asking prospects where they have heard about you. This will enable you to determine when a marketing tactic stops working and replace it with a more effective strategy.