Marketing Overview

To succeed, entrepreneurs must attract and retain a growing base of satisfied customers. Marketing programs, though widely varied, are all aimed at convincing customers to try out or keep using particular products or services. Business owners should carefully plan their marketing strategies to keep their market presence strong.

Marketing is based on the importance of customers to a business and has two main principles:

1. All company policies and activities should be directed toward satisfying customer needs
2. Profitable sales volume is more important than maximum sales volume.

To best use these principles, a small business should:

• Determine the needs of their customers through market research
• Analyze their competitive advantages to develop a market strategy
• Select specific markets to serve by target marketing
• Determine how to satisfy customer needs by identifying a market mix

Successful marketing requires timely and relevant market information. Market research will identify trends that affect sales and profitability. Population shifts, legal developments, and the local economic situation should be monitored to quickly identify problems and opportunities. It is also important to keep up with competitors' market strategies.

A sound marketing plan is key to the success of your business. It should include your market research, your location, the customer group you have targeted, your competition, positioning, the product or service you are selling, pricing, advertising, and promotion.

Remember your marketing plan needs to specify how the features of your product or service will meet the customer wants and needs, that is, define those features- characteristics of your product/service and benefits - what your customer will derive by using those features.

As part of writing a marketing plan you will need to carry out market research to identify who your customers are, their age, gender, occupation, income, education, and location. This will provide you with the opportunity later to target audiences and the type of marketing material most suited to them as well as the best channel for reaching them. A little pre-planning will save you a lot of money in the long run and create a substantial return on investment.

Courtesy of the SBA