Launching marketing activities for specific target groups does not simply mean making the content of your newsletter interesting for individual customer groups. Many other marketing activities can also be aimed at individual segments of the target group. We would like to give you some very specific examples of this.
Example: Invitation to a trade fair for specific customer segments.
For example, you are an electronics supplier and sell projectors for large conference rooms as well as laptops for private customers. Now you are participating in a trade fair that focuses exclusively on projectors for conference rooms. You have a set of free tickets to the trade fair that you would like to provide to your customers.
If you now send an invitation with a voucher code to the trade fair to all your customers, many of them will not be interested at all, since they do not need projectors for large event rooms. It is therefore much wiser to segment your customers first and provide free tickets to the trade fair only to very specific customer groups.
For example, you can use the necessary software to filter customers by who has already purchased a projector from you, which of your customers are making a purchase, or who works for a large company that probably has large spaces for which your projectors are suitable.
Such segmentation not only helps you to reach the right (potential) customers, but also to choose the right form of marketing approach. For example, in a B2B context, you can communicate in a much more specialized way than if all end customers also received an invitation. If you want to further segment the target group, you can use additional criteria. For example, recommend a suitable hotel for visiting a trade fair to all recipients who are not from the region.
Example: Use industry events for marketing.
By classifying your contacts, you can immediately see which customers belong to a certain industry. This gives you the opportunity to adapt your marketing measures to industry events. These include, for example, major trade fairs or economic events in the industry.
We would like to illustrate this with a concrete example: you work as a sales training provider and have clients from a wide variety of industries. If you want to present a special offer for your services, it makes much more sense to do so in the run-up to a trade show than after it.
By categorizing your contacts in the software by industry, you can view all contacts from an industry with one click. This gives you the opportunity to send selected contacts a very specific offer of your sales training before the trade show. At this stage, your contacts will be much more open to your offer than at any other time.
After the trade show, you can publish a blog article giving tips on how to work with the trade show contacts you have acquired and inform relevant contacts in the industry about your blog article in a newsletter. By using the software to provide your clients with offers and content that are relevant to them at the moment, you will be successful in your marketing efforts.
Example: Use seasonal events for marketing.
Like industry events, seasonal events can also be used well for marketing. However, not all seasonal events are equally interesting to all customer groups.
At this stage, it is also important to use software to identify contacts for whom the seasonal event has business significance. Christmas can be very important for many B2C companies, but in B2B, the beginning of the year can be much more important. If you know which seasonal events are relevant to which of your customers, you can use them for specific marketing campaigns by simply filtering out contacts.
Example: Don’t forget about marketing to existing customers.
Existing customers are quickly forgotten in the marketing department, because when it comes to marketing, people usually think about acquiring new customers. Existing customers are very important to the success of a company.
And retaining existing customers usually takes much less time than acquiring new ones: you have already convinced them to buy your own product, and you have significantly more information about existing customers than you do about potential new customers. It is important to identify potential among existing customers and tailor your marketing accordingly.
Marketing software can be used to document whether customers are one-time deal hunters or repeat customers who, of course, should be approached differently.
Marketing to existing customers is more than just a weekly newsletter. If you are keeping track of your customer information using software and can use it for marketing, you will be able to reach your customers in a much more specific way. This could be sending a greeting card as a measure of customer loyalty, or actively asking after purchasing a product whether the customer was able to use the product correctly for their specific application.
Example: Address journalists as multipliers.
With the help of marketing software, you can manage not only customer data, but also all other contacts, such as business partners or service providers. In the context of marketing, in addition to customers and potential customers, the most relevant contacts are those who can bring attention to your product, i.e. journalists and bloggers.
PR offers many opportunities, especially for smaller companies with a small marketing budget, to help their own product or service become known. However, PR means much more than just sending out a press release. For PR success, it is essential to know as well as possible the media and journalists you are addressing with your PR content.
As with specific targeting of customer groups, it is essential here that the information is precisely tailored to the needs of the journalist or blogger. Marketing software also offers important opportunities, since information about journalists and bloggers can be documented here and thus the approach to multipliers can be optimized.
Define Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Before you can really start pitching your company's offerings, and in fact before you even start putting your product or service on the street, you need to define your own unique selling proposition (USP). With a USP, you highlight the one thing that makes you unique and sets you apart from your competitors. Ultimately, you should be able to answer one question above all else for potential customers: Why should I buy from you and not from others?
The following questions will help you define your USP:
- Is your offering particularly low cost (cost leadership)?
- Does your offering have particularly good value for money?
- Is your offering particularly high quality?
- What special features/characteristics does your offering have?
Define and monitor your own marketing goals
Once the marketing components (product, price, distribution policy and promotion), USP and target group have been defined, many entrepreneurs want to implement specific marketing measures as quickly as possible. However, a little patience is required at this stage, because before you start printing your logo on ballpoint pens like crazy, you need to be clear about your own goals. This is important, on the one hand, because specific measures within a consistent marketing concept become more targeted and effective, and on the other hand, because then success can be measured later.
There is a fundamental difference between qualitative and quantitative marketing goals, which we would like to briefly discuss.
Qualitative marketing goals initially consider purely non-economic goals and are therefore often called perception goals. Here you are dealing with questions such as: "Do we want to strengthen the relationship with our existing customers and improve our service"? Or: "How can we create a positive corporate image"? With the help of qualitative perception goals, you determine whether and in what form you want to convey the company's image to outsiders.
Quantitative marketing goals are related to numerical indicators. Economic marketing goals are related, for example, to your own sales targets, market share or conversion rates. Within the framework of the achieved goals, you can define in which areas you want to attract more potential customers (e.g. more Facebook fans or website traffic). Quantitative marketing goals always reflect a kind of "action-effect relationship" of your own marketing concepts.
Corporate identity: find your own personality and convey it
A company's identity or corporate identity reflects how the company is perceived within the company, i.e. by employees or founders. In the best case, this (internal) image corresponds to the corporate image, i.e. the image of the company from outsiders (e.g. customers). It is bad when the corporate image and corporate identity only partially overlap.
Suppose a company that advertises itself as a producer of eco-friendly clothing violates human rights in its products all over the world. Even if the corporate image can maintain the illusion of sustainability and fairness for some time, the discrepancy between image and identity will inevitably lead to collapse.
Therefore, a company should always focus on its own identity first. Are you a trendy start-up with short decision-making processes and slaps in meetings or a serious management consultancy where you will never see an employee without a suit?
Regardless of what corporate identity you define at the beginning and how it develops over time, it is important to present it to the outside world and use the corresponding marketing components. Under the umbrella of corporate identity are four supporting pillars, which together represent a structure and must be coordinated with each other.
1. Corporate Behavior
Corporate behavior reflects how a company achieves its own goals. In monetary terms, this could be pricing behavior or the further development of its own product portfolio. In non-monetary terms, this could include information flows or the management of employees within the company.
2. Corporate Design
Corporate design refers to a uniform appearance of the company. This is an important tool, especially in the context of your own recognition, and it aims to present the company in a uniform way both internally and externally.
This includes your own logo or uniform colors and design used in presentations and on your own website. At this point, we would like to recommend articles on the Internet on the topic of logo design.
3. Corporate Communication
In addition to a consistent appearance, the company's communication style also plays an important role. Corporate communication is about choosing a consistent and authentic communication style. And not only for your target group, but also for employees, stakeholders and partners.
4. Corporate Culture
The fourth and final pillar of corporate style is corporate culture. Corporate culture develops over time in every company and is related, for example, to how and through which channels decisions are made, as well as to how employees perceive the hierarchy or the work environment as such.
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