It's in the detail!

How do you make your marketing really work and what do you need to consider when targeting it correctly?

 

I often ask the question what is your catchment area?  And one of the frequent replies is ‘Oh, just local’.

 

So what is local?  What is the immediate area and how do you drill down to what that really means?

 

My next question is then what do you mean by local?  Is that in distance – 10 miles from the office, or is that in time, 10 minutes’ drive – in some cases that can be a very different result.  Or could that be just the village or town that the office is located in, or the office location plus the surrounding villages or towns, or is that just West Sussex, Surrey or Kent.

 

The options to the catchment area question are many, and this will have a big impact on who are, and how you target your current and potential customers.  Your success will lie in the attention to detail.

 

So what else often needs more detailed thought?

 

Surprisingly the ‘Who is your target customer, or who is your customer?’ question is often again very vague.  Or in some cases the answer is completely wrong.  Is the answer you give, who you think it is, who it actually is, or who you want it to be?  Again the differences between the answers can be very different and so much comes in to play here that often the correct answer is not the one that is given.

 

This was brought really to my mind when I was told the following story.

 

A few years ago a well-known DIY store opened a new branch next to a new housing estate that predominately attracted the younger home buyers.  All of the young families were expected to flood to the store, to get the items they needed to set up their homes and the marketing was targeted accordingly.

 

However, the store did not flourish and was greatly under-performing with no-one really knowing why.  So they did some on site market research and quickly noted that the large proportion of their customers, and those spending the cash, were of an older generation.  It was the parents of the home buyers that were the ones with the disposable income, not the purchasers themselves.  The marketing campaign was duly changed and the store was then a success.

 

We can all make incorrect assumptions, so consider how detailed your answers need to be and whether a more defined approach would yield better results.  In the majority of cases you will find that it will.

 

And if you would like some help, to really drill down and ensure that you target your marketing correctly, please give me a call on 01403 790146 or email me on heather@joystars.co.uk and we can have a chat.