Marketing means many different things to many different people. To some, marketing is merely a process that only large businesses should be concerned about; to others it is just an expensive way to find out what the client wants. Whatever your views on marketing are, you cannot hide from the fact that it is a necessity for each and every business no matter how big or small and not just an accessory for the larger businesses with huge budgets to spend. Marketing can be simply described as: how to bring in the business.

Why Use Marketing?

In the first instance you have to tell your clients about the product or service you are selling but more importantly you must be selling something that they actually want and will buy. This is where your marketing methods will prove to be invaluable. Marketing methods come in many shapes and sizes but can easily be summed up in one word, research. Your marketing methods will help you to identify your potential market and everything associated with it.

To just find out if your product or service will sell is not enough on its own. You need to be aware of:

• who will buy from you
• how often will they buy
• the amount they will buy
• what they are prepared to pay
• what do they expect to get for their money
• which newspapers do they read
• where to advertise to maximise the response
• who and where are your competitors.

Researching Your Clients

Your potential clients are one of the most important elements of your business. Without clients your business is nothing: it will cease to be. Treat your clients well and they will come back time after time but upset them once and you may have lost them for life. Many new businesses are formed in the belief that as soon as they begin to trade then the clients will come. In reality nothing could be further from the truth.

Compiling a business plan is all about forward planning, and getting strategies to ensure that your business is both viable and profitable. Therefore, to even begin to consider the direction your business will take without first considering your client base is marketing suicide. Knowing and understanding who your clients are will be crucial when you are devising your marketing plan and deciding whom to target for your advertising and promotion. A truly successful business will provide a product or service which has a universal appeal to each and every client and is able to satisfy all of their needs.

Segmenting Your Market

The buzz word in marketing over the last few years has been ‘market segmentation’. It is unlikely that your business will be able to sell to every part of the industry you are in. Instead you need to discover which segment of the market will be more lucrative and profitable.

Example: Two Restaurants

Two restaurants on opposite sides of the road may be in the same overall market of providing food for clients, but they could be in quite different segments of that market, depending for example on the type of food they serve, the prices they charge, the decor of the premises and quality of the service they offer. One could be a cordon bleu restaurant aimed at a high-spending clientele, the other a ‘greasy spoon’ with its own type of clients. These are two similar business in quite different segments of the same marketplace.

Compiling Your Market Research

How to compile your market research could almost be a book in itself– in fact there are already a number of books available on the subject. Your local book shop and library will have a wide selection for you to choose from. Market segmentation is just one area of your market research. Although important, it is even more important to look at your potential market as a whole.

Market research in its simplest form is the name given to the method of collating, storing, organising and assessing information about clients, competitors and any other ways they are influenced in the buying of products. Whether you are starting a new business or launching a new product or service, your research should be compiled before you embark fully on the project. In the long term time spent on how to investigate your potential market will be time well spent, especially if you discover a major flaw in your idea or even worse find out that there is not even a market. At least then you could have only lost the time and energy it has taken to compile your data and not thousands of pounds in stock you cannot sell or a product that will be too expensive to manufacture.