Building Your Marketing Plan - Step Two

Today we continue with the 7-Step Marketing Plan Development series. Last month, we talked about your market and competitive analysis – the clear goal being to understand if people want what you have to sell – and how to position yourself against your competition.

Step Two is the process of understanding your customer. Here, we seek to understand who our customers are – why they buy – and how they buy. We know there are two types of buying styles – people who need things – and people who want things. And trust me – these are two entirely different types of buyers. Selling someone an iPod when they want one is easier than convincing someone they need to make repairs on their roof that suffered hail damage…

You need to know how people buy your product. On the web? In a store? You need to know who the primary decision-maker is in the buying process. Is it the CEO? Is it the spouse? And you need to understand where they get their information when considering your product or service. Internet research? Direct mail? Word-of-mouth?

Finally, you need to understand their motivation for buying. Is it to improve productivity? To lose weight? To get that toy their wife said they couldn’t have?

Knowing the answers to these questions will make your marketing efforts far more successful, and they will make you an intrepid entrepreneur!

Todd Schnick is the president of the Intrepid Group LLC (www.intrepid-llc.com), a small business marketing firm. You can find his small business marketing blog at http://intrepidgroup.blogspot.com!

(Published in the August edition of The Stuckey Report)