Smart Marketing: Good Decisions Need Research

Throughout the past year, I’ve written a great deal about some of the options you have for promoting your business. All of these are valid and can be effective, to one degree or another, depending on a single, rather significant, issue. Have you done your research?

There are, in essence, two aspects to marketing. One is the artistic aspect. What does your marketing message say? How does it look? Is it clear? Does it differentiate? These are creative, qualitative issues and are usually pretty subjective, even though many large organizations test messages before spending large amounts of money producing and placing creative advertising.

The second aspect is the scientific aspect. Does it reach your target? Is it efficient? Does it make a significant number of impressions? These are quantitative questions and are measurable objectively. In order to achieve maximum bang for the buck, these questions require more than guesses for answers. They require research.

GUESSING GAME. Many companies in our industry that I’m aware of tend to guess at some of the key quantitative questions, in large part based on years of experience. I understand this, but I still think it’s dangerous and potentially can lead to making some wrong decisions.

Basically, you need to know answers to a few key questions before you proceed with spending a great deal of money on promoting your business. First, who is your customer? Demographically, whom do you want to reach with your creative message? A man? A woman? An adult (equal numbers of each)? How old is he/she? 25+? 35+? 25-44? 25-54? 35-54? 35-64? How much household income does your customer have? $30,000+? $50,000+? $75,000+? Answers to these questions significantly affect your media selections.

Second, where is your customer? Is he/she within five miles of your business location? How about in the limits of a city or county? Maybe he/she is all over your "market." By clearly identifying where your customer base is located, you can narrow your choices to media that cover that geographical area but don’t provide a great deal of wasted coverage. I have to laugh when radio stations located on the East Coast of Florida include a large chunk of the Atlantic Ocean in their coverage maps. Talk about wasted coverage!

So, now you know what you need to find out. But how do you get this information? If you’re a really big company, either you have your market research department gather this data or you contract the task out to a research company. If you’re like the rest of us, and don’t have either the human or financial resources dedicated to this task, you have to get creative.

INFORMATION HUNTING. Try to design a simple form asking for a few specific bits of information. Let’s assume for the moment that yours is a residential pest and termite company. And let’s assume also that your customers all or mostly live in single-family homes. Fair assumptions, right? Have your technicians ask each of their customers to answer the following questions, anonymously. How old are you? 25-34? 35-44? 45-54? 55-64? 65 or older? Male or female? Is your household income more than $30,000, $50,000 or $100,000? What is your ZIP Code?

On a simple level, that’s pretty much what you need to know before you start spending money. If you want to get sophisticated, you might ask them why they bought services specifically from you. Referral? Price? Reputation? Great salesperson? They saw your truck in the neighborhood? If you can get between 400 and 500 of your customers to respond to this, and if you can draw some conclusions from the information you receive, you’re armed with great information to make smart advertising decisions.

The author is vice president of marketing/public relations for Massey Services Inc., Maitland, Fla. He can be reached at 407/645-2500 or via e-mail at bbrewer@pctonline.com.