The importance of Market Research

Whether you run a hairdressing salon or a garage, knowing your customers is vital to the life of your business. Learning about them can help you target your marketing and ensure you are providing the product or service they will buy. Market Reseach doesn’t have to expensive and the money spent can be repaid several times over.

• When you know who wants your product/service you can specifically target them rather than waste money trying to reach everyone. Save money and increase sales
• Research techniques such as interviews and questionnaires will help you find out what your customers want and what they may be interested in buying in the future. You save money by not bringing in products that won’t sell
• Gain as much information from your customers as you can. What are their favourite products, what do they like or dislike about your offering? Find out their ages, gender, dates of birth etc. This way you can target specific messages to them via email or direct mail
• Collect information about the reasons your customers buy certain products above others. Knowing why someone buys something means you will know how and what to sell
• Finally, do they buy particular products at certain times of year. You may find you can introduce new products to coincide with buying patterns.

For help contact DLH Marketing. Text your name or call 07790 012893. email david@dlhmarketing.co.uk

This morning it was reported that Apple Corp. had made £3billion during the past three months. This was despite teething problems and some negative press on the iPhone 4. It got me thinking about how this was achieved and how easily could other, smaller organisations replicate it.

Obviously there are several reasons but what Apple do better than almost anyone else is not provide products we want but products we are willing to pay for.

We all want a mobile phone that works, is user friendly, gives us freedom and looks good. However, with hundreds of models on the market Apple have created a product that many people will pay 2, 3, 4 times as much for to own.

Take a look at your product and  talk to your customers and prospective customers, decide what makes it stand out. We can all provide want the customer wants but are you providing what they will pay for?

www.dlhmarketing.co.uk

SERVICE, SERVICE, SERVICE

During a shopping trip last weekend my daughter was looking for a handbag that would match a pair of shoes she was wearing for a wedding. Easy you would think! Unfortunately the task proved more diffilcult than she had hoped. However, more frustrating was the assistance, or lack of it from the majority of the stores she went into. Either the assistants were more concerned with discussing the coming evening or they weren’t aware of the stock the store carried or couldn’t be bothered to look any further than the shelves. Basically, they couldn’t be bothered, that is except one where the assistant went out of her way to help. Not only looking at her own section but discussing the requirement with other sections until eventually the perfect bag was found at a not inconsiderable price.

As is the case these days, between shops, my daughter was texting her various friends and recalling the experience in each shop. Needless to say the shop and assistant that provided the help got a great sale and some free publicity whereas the others, well…

Secret customer programmes from www.dlhmarketing.co.uk

Marketing and sales working together

You have spent time, energy and resources to win a new customer, now you have to think about how to manage them. The process from lead to purchase from the customer will have involved a group of people responsible for budgets, influencing and decision making. It’s highly likely that now a new group of characters will come into the frame these may include production control, cost centre managers and product/service users.

Many organisations see this ongoing management as a responsibility of the sales team but is this really the best use of their talents?

This new group will include people who know very little about your company, product or service and will need educating. There will therefore be the need for relationship building activities to be developed if you are ti secure customer loyalty and retention. 

Many organisations see this ongoing management as a responsibility of the sales team but is this really the best use of their talents?

The goal of sales is to increase customer revenue. If they are split between revenue building and customer loyalty building you will be losing on both counts. By using marketing to develop a multi-media communication programme that delivers relevant, value based messages to the various individuals you will increase retention. Loyalty is a very personal emotion and the key motive of this strategy is to communicate and create the feeling of a real reationship with your company and not with a sales person who may leave over time.

You gain in two key areas. Your sales team are free to develop new opportunities both within the customer organisation and outside and you benefit from increased customer satisfaction. Not only are they receiving relevant information but members staff who don’t need to are not being required to see sales people unless they wish to.

www.dlhmarketing.co.uk

Inbound Marketing

Potential customers are bombarded by marketing and sales messages on a daily basis many of which are filtered out before being seen or heard by the recipient. The alternative is to get them to come to you (Inbound Marketing). The internet is used constantly for aquiring information and your job is to ensure that you provide the information potential customers will want. Blogs and social networking sites are easy platforms that provide you with the tools to communicatre your companies expertise and also help with your search engine ranking. A supplier/customer relationship is all about building trust and confidence so make sure the content is relavant, helpful and up to date.