As a digital marketing agency, we’re used to prospective clients approaching us and explaining what they want an agency to do for them. Although this may sometimes end up being in line with what we believe they require, it is important to understand how they came to this conclusion in the first place.
Has an internal marketing team member developed a strategy, or has a member of the Board conducted online research and reached conclusions? Or, perhaps, they are fixated on ideas that are simply the areas with which they are most familiar, rather than a thorough understanding of all the options?
Here’s where you should start, including our main insights into how to create and define your marketing activity, whether you’re wanting to assess your marketing strategy or just want to hear our approach.
Market Orientation
Simply put, marketing should never be biased, and no one should ever make a decision about their target audience based on a gut feeling. Marketers frequently believe they do not have the time to conduct proper consumer research, but this must be part of the planning process before any launch.
“If there is one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as your own,” Ford added. With this in mind, brands must begin with the consumer before launching any new product or service.
So, What’s Next?
It’s critical at this point to gain a deeper understanding of your target audience. Again, marketers frequently make a lot of assumptions in this area. Marketing Companies Ottawa is critical to any marketing strategy, and it must come before judgments on audience segmentation and targeting.
As part of our Strategy projects at Hallam, we look into four main areas of research:
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Customer Surveys
This can take the shape of both qualitative conversational research and quantitative surveys of a broader representative sample of consumers to delve further into their requirements and concerns.
In the marketing space, there’s been heaps of buzz on client centricity, a procedure to adjust an organization’s items and administrations to the needs and needs of its most significant clients essentially.
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Competitor Analysis
When it comes to competitors, there is a wide range of research areas available, from product and pricing to Marketing Strategy, but the goal of this research is to understand your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in comparison to your own to identify market gaps.
We’ve found that a business’ game plan for success and differentiation from the competition is a savvy marketing strategy.
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Interviews with Employees
Speaking with those who live and breathe a company daily can be one of the most valuable ways to understand a company, especially those who work in customer-facing roles. Your employees will understand your customers’ problems better than anyone else.
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Secondary Investigation
Secondary research should be conducted in addition to primary research; it is also readily available and abundant, with much to learn from online sources ranging from social media to third-party reports.
Conclusion
You’ve completed your study and are now ready to embrace the customer complexity that your company faces. You can now see that different client kinds have distinct needs, and segmentation is created by grouping these customer types.
You’re in a far better position to start making judgments about how to position your brand – and to whom – at this point in your marketing plan. Only when all of these elements have been determined can you safely plan your business’s aims and approaches to truly drive marketing success.
So, the next time you review your marketing strategy, make sure to check whether these foundations have been laid before the work begins.
