Marketing Requires Customer Knowledge

Of all the quotes I’ve heard related to marketing, the one I like best is generally attributed to Henry Ford. He is credited with saying something like, "I know that only about half of my marketing is effective. I just don’t know which half." Can you relate?

Marketing is a combination of research and communication, all of which is intended to promote interest in your product. All marketing works, but to what extent? The questions is in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. How well did it work? How much did it cost?

THE PURPOSE OF MARKETING. Most businesspeople who are not schooled or trained marketers see marketing as something like taking medicine when you’re sick. They don’t like to do it, but they know that if they don’t either nothing good or something bad will happen. Those of us in the marketing field also know, in most cases, that we’re taking a risk every time we spend or invest in some marketing activity. How much or how little risk depends greatly on how much we know going in. I should point out that there are groups of people, even in small towns, who it seems exist to confuse and confound you. These people sell marketing-related products and services. Each of them will tell you that his or her product or service is all you need to be successful. The funny thing is, on a very narrow level, they’re all right.

To one degree or another, everything in marketing works. The questions you must ask these people and yourself are:

• Is it effective?

• Is it efficient?

• Can I measure it?

• Can I afford it?

"Is it effective?" means do your marketing efforts produce the desired result (usually leads for new business). "Is it efficient?" means does it produce those leads at a practical cost. "Can I measure it?" means can you attribute the result directly to the specific investment. "Can I afford it?" is self-explanatory.

The only marketing products and services you should buy are those about which you can answer unequivocally YES to all of these questions. Obviously this is much easier said than done!

RESEARCHING YOUR CUSTOMER. Before you purchase any marketing ser vices or products, you need to know three basic things. This is where some rudimentary research is necessary. Know for certain the answers to these questions and you’ll be ahead of the game:

• Who is my customer?

• Where is my customer?

• What does my customer want, need and/or expect from me?

The "Who is my customer?" question is one of demographics. Is your customer a man or a woman? How old is he/she? For residential pest services, chances are you’ll find that your customer is more likely a woman than a man, and that she, generally speaking, is more than 35 years of age. Simply knowing this narrows your marketing focus.

The "Where is my customer?" question is one of geography. Where does she live? What’s the value of her home? If yours is a small local business, chances are your customer is in your county, city or metropolitan area. Use the "80/20 rule" here. Chances are that 80 percent of your customers are in a relatively identifiable area. This again narrows your focus. If there’s a single, undeniable truth in the marketing of residential services, it’s that your next customer probably resembles and lives near your current customer.

The "What does my customer want, need and/or expect from me?" question is about your message. Why did she call? Why did she call YOU? Why did she buy from you? If you know what motivates your customer to call you and what causes her to purchase from you instead of your competitor, you’ll know how to better communicate to your next customers.

To learn this information, large organizations hire market researchers to conduct surveys of their customers. But even owners with small businesses can benefit from knowing the answers to these questions. And with a relatively brief, concerted effort, you can obtain this information simply by talking to your customers. Talk to 10 customers every day and in a month or two you’ll know these important answers.

Once you know these answers, you’ll be able to sift through the myriad marketing products and services available to you and select those that are most effective and efficient. It may, depending on the size of your business, be as simple as "cloverleafing" around your existing customers. This involves offering a meaningful discount to home-owners who live adjacent to or across from your current customers. It may, if you operate on a larger scale, involve direct mail, mass media (TV, radio, cable, newspaper) and it most likely will involve some presence in your Yellow Pages telephone directory.

In coming months, we’ll focus on marketing products and services in an effort to de-mystify and clarify the roles each should play in your business’ overall promotion. In the meantime, if you have a question, send it to me and I’ll answer one or two in an upcoming column.