A common mistake made by businesses is believing that the first step in growing their business is to do more marketing. Ann Gibbard explains what should precede your marketing decisions.
There are several steps to be taken before you are ready to market your business. These include:
- Knowing what you want your company to look like in 3-5 years’ time
- Understanding the core values of your company
- Knowing who your best customers are, where they are and where they are likely to make their buying decisions
- Understanding what makes your business different to your competition (also known as unique selling propositions (USPs) or points of difference).
Get to know your competition. Are you in an industry where there are many competitors or just a few? In a crowded market, you need to work harder to stand out from the rest.
An important distinction to make when looking at your points of difference is to decide what is a market requirement compared to a true point of difference. For example, a supermarket will have a range of food and other products available, trolleys, and an ability to pay by EFTPOS or credit card at the checkout. Points of difference between the supermarkets might be a wider range of products, a fresh fish bar, self-serve checkouts (although this is fast becoming a market requirement), or getting your bags packed at checkout.
To start finding your points of difference, consider what you do well that your competitors might not do well. What do you get good feedback on? Is there anything that your competitors do well that you should be doing?
Now that you know which parts of your service offering you want to promote, who your best customers are and where look to make their buying decisions, as well as what your points of difference are, you will have a much better idea of what to market, how to market and where to market your business. By being much more targeted, you should get a better return on investment from your marketing spend.