Marketing Competition: Dare to Be Different

This week we are going to focus on marketing. For starters, let’s define exactly what marketing is.

In the simplest of terms, marketing is everything you do to promote your business. Why does that matter? Because marketing and sales are the keys to turning your passions into profits.

Let’s say you have the greatest idea ever. You turn that idea into a product or service so brilliant nobody could possibly compete with what you have to offer. There is an old myth that if you create the perfect product at the right time, people will beat a path to your door to get it. But in reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

Marketing is the crucial ingredient that turns your brilliant idea into an income-generating business. And it includes some things you may never have thought of as “marketing.” Here is a list of possible elements of a marketing plan from Jay and Jeanne Levinson, authors of the Startup Guide to Guerilla Marketing:

• The name of your business
• Determining whether you will be selling a product or service
• Method of manufacture or service
• Colors, size,and shape of your product
• Packaging
• Location of your business
• Advertising
• Public relations
• Sales training
• Sales presentation
• Telephone inquiries
• Problem solving
• Growth plan
• Referral plan
• Follow-up

We will talk  more about specific guerilla marketing strategies later this week, but for now I just want you to get the picture that marketing occurs every time your business has an interaction or contact with prospective customers.

Research the Competition

To develop an effective marketing plan…guerilla or otherwise…you first have to know what the competition is doing.  The best way to find out is to do some research…or “spying” in guerilla marketing terms.

One of the easiest ways to spy on the competition is on the internet.  Remember when we used Google to search key words to help you select a niche market?   That was just the beginning of what you can find out with the help of the internet.

One nifty tool to help you spy on your competitors is needkeywordtool.com.   Just enter your key words in the form, and it will take you to a long list of related key words.  For each word, you can see at a glance how many people are searching, and how many businesses are competing for ad space on the page. This will give you a sense of what people are looking for, and what businesses are competing to fill their needs.

But this is just where the fun begins.  As you do a search for the key words that seem promising, you will find tons of valuable information.  First, you want to click on at least the top 5 or 6 “sponsored ads” to see what other businesses are advertising.  You also want to click on thetop5 or 6 sites that come up in the search results, to see what products, services and information potential customers are being led to.

For each website that is related to your product or service, you should take notes about who they are and what they are doing.  Then you should put each site into one of the following categories:

• Competition:  offerings products or services in direct competition with yours.
• Potential partners:  offering complementary products and services that might provide potential for joint ventures, cross-promotion and the like.
• Potential advertising source:  sites providing information that is related to your product or service, where you could potentially advertise to their readers.

Guerilla marketers have lots of other ways to get free research about their competitors. Here are some ideas from the StartUp Guide to Guerilla Marketing:

• Order something and evaluate the quality of the product, the smoothness of the process, etc.
• Visit your competitors and evaluate them through the eyes of a consumer.
• Phone your competitors and request something, and assess their customer service.
• Don’t forget to spy on yourself to spot your own advantages and deficiencies.

Once you have finished your research, compare everything through the eyes of your potential customers.  Figure out how you can be different and better than the rest…in product, service, price or attitude.

Identify Your Ideal Customer

Have you ever heard of Pareto’s Law? Professor Pareto was an economics professor who observed that 80% of Italy’s real estate was owned by only 20% of the population.  Over the years, this 80/20 ratio has proven to be true for just about any realm of human activity.

Professor Pareto’s observation is now known as Pareto’s Law or the 80/20 rule, and it has profound implications for how you should market your products or services.

If  Pareto’s Law holds true for your business, that means that roughly 80% of your revenue will be generated by about 20% of your customers.  If you could identify who that 20% will be, wouldn’t that give you a tremendous advantage in figuring out your marketing plan? And what if you could figure out a way to make all of your customers like that top 20%?

That is the goal of identifying your “ideal customer.”  Who is your ideal customer?   John Assaraf and Murray Smith describe them this way:

Your ideal customer is the one who not only buys your product or service, but who buys it and uses it with passion.  Your ideal customer is the one who really wants what you have to offer.  The ideal customer doesn’t just use your product, she loves your product.  She doesn’t just purchase your service; she feels that she couldn’t live without it.

Can you see the power of identifying who your ideal customers would be?  They are the ones who will help you build your business through the best form of free advertising…word-of-mouth.  There is no more powerful marketing force than a testimonial from a satisfied customer.  So let’s get to work and figure out who that might be.

Going back to our example of the fly fishing business, let’s say that in addition to selling cool flies, you decided to offer guide services to some of the best fly fishing ponds in the country.  One way to think about the ideal customer would be demographics.

What would be the age, gender, income level, education, and other relevant features of a person who would be likely to go on a guided fishing tour.  There are resources that can actually produce market studies for you on the demographic characteristics of your prospective market.

But demographics are not enough.  You also have to think about the personal characteristics of your target market, and how their “wants” match up with what you have to offer.

For example, out of the universe of people who want to go on a fly fishing trip, you can paint several different pictures…the traditional male bonding adventure trip…the rugged outdoorsperson who wants to camp out and rough it…the dad who wants to introduce the kids to his favorite sport…the family that wants a well-rounded vacation with activities for all ages and interests.

Now you see why it is important to identify your ideal customer.  Our fly fishing business cannot possibly serve all of those groups well.  Now is the time to identify exactly what kind of fly fishing business she wants to start, and what products or services her ideal customer would be drawn to.

Going beyond demographic research takes some time and creativity.  If you are already in business, you can survey current and prospective customers to find out the psychographic information you need to identify the motivations or reasons people buy from you. If you haven’t yet started your business, you will have to use your imagination to get inside the head of your ideal customers.

What you are doing here is creating your “dream customer.”  Envision them as clearly as you can, and keep your focus on satisfying their wants and needs.  This will differentiate you from the competition and increase the effectiveness of your marketing tools.