No business, whatever its size, has unlimited resources for marketing. That’s why every dollar spent on promotion has to count.
If your company was advertising accounting services, you wouldn’t buy ads on MTV. Similarly, promoting auto parts in a magazine focused on early child years also would not be the best use of resources. Placing your advertising in these promotional vehicles may very well help you connect with some new potential customers, but advertising is best leveraged when you find the “sweet spot” — groups of people most likely to buy your product or service. To do so, research is necessary to understand consumer habits and needs, as well as market trends.
First, know your audience
For small companies, it is more evident who their customers are. Usually, a successful business owner doesn’t need to be told who’s most likely to buy his or her product. The common mistake I often see, though, are small businesses forgetting this basic marketing principle when they buy their advertising: Always remind yourself who your target audiences are, and match them up with the media that best reach those groups.
For companies with more resources, deploying professional research is a valuable tool to measure perceptions of products or services and understand market trends. This is especially valuable for larger companies where decision-makers often don’t have the advantage of being on the front lines and interacting with customers.
Use your research well
Strategies such as focus groups and larger sample studies via telephone can also test the effectiveness of advertising messages and product packaging. This is frequently done in politics. After baseline perceptions are measured, pollsters frequently test to see if new information changes the favorability of the candidate or his or her opponent.
While this is classified by many as push polls, it is actually a research tactic to see what messages might sway voters. In addition to learning more about the marketplace, private companies can leverage this type of research to make their advertising even more effective.
In a world where marketing dollars are harder to find, companies can best leverage their resources by accurately understanding who their customers are, what their habits are and what media are the best choices to reach them.
Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a leading Hudson Valley advertising and public relations agency. He can be reached at josh@advertisingandpr.com or 294-3342, ext. 303. Read his blog at www.advertisingandpr.com.
