March 31, 2008
Welcome to Marketing Magic.
In these monthly newsletters, Network Marketing Business School aims to build on the information we provide on our website, delivering you with practical knowledge that can add value to your business. Each month we will review real scenarios from our subscribers and offer advice on how to overcome their problems. If you need help with a problem or you have advice to give on a topic please let us know such that in the true sense of networking we can help one another and in return if we publish your comments we will link back to your business.
Issue #1 Understanding your target market
Given this is our first Marketing Magic newsletter it seems fitting that we start by discussing targeted marketing strategies and more importantly one of the most common marketing mistakes made by networkers. Let’s see if you can pick it up in our case study.
Case Study - Toby from Perth, Australia
Toby contacted us via email about a month ago to ask a question that we get all the time. How can I attract new leads for my business?
Toby has been in his network marketing business that specialises in health and wellness products for three years and while the size of his downline has fluctuated over the years he currently has 23 people in his team. Over the past 6 months his business has come to a staggering holt. Like most network marketers he has already gone through his name list and additionally he has worked hundreds of purchased leads. These leads are becoming more and more expensive and he can no longer afford to keep them up. Toby decided to design his own marketing strategy by sending out flyers hoping that it would help to produce leads.
Toby averaged 1500 flyers a month and was specifically targeting the middle class suburbs. At the time, Toby thought his strategy was brilliant, his rationale was that many of the middle class people are stuck paying off a large morgage and therefore could do with some extra money that he could offer them through a home-based business. Unfortunately Toby’s marketing strategy failed to produce the leads he was hoping for and like many networkers he wanted to know why he was only getting one or two enquires each month? Despite months of the same campaign his luck didn’t improve and he contacted us for advice.
Let’s start with the basics.
If your strategy isn’t working, it’s time to change strategies. If you have sent out 1500 flyers the first month and it doesn’t work then there is a fair chance it won’t improve the following months. One of the many things that Albert Einstein is famous for (some people might argue it was Benjamin Franklin) was his definition of insanity, which is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” We can all learn from this valuable lesson.
The next important point to consider was the lack market research.
I asked Toby to explain to me what he knew about his target market? In brief his response was that he thought at least 60% of people in these suburbs would be paying off a home loan and therefore would be interested to learn more about his business opportunity. Great in theory, but to me it was obvious there was a one huge marketing flaw with Toby’s plan (even before we saw the flyer) – it was based on assumptions! This is one of the most common mistakes made by small business owners, particular those with a limited marketing background. They develop marketing strategies that are based on what they think they know about their target market.
A brief lesson in Marketing
According to Bevans (1987), much of the fault with marketing campaigns is that its central orientation is WE. Too often do marketing campaigns start from the incorrect assumption that WE know what THEY want to hear. They should be personalising the message – that is, focusing on the mirror inversion of we –ME
“Message begins with ‘me’. Me singular. Indeed there is no such thing as mass communication. It’s a contradiction in terms. Communication is an intensely personal, one –to – one process, whether you’re doing it over the phone of over the TV network. One is the very heart of communication”
– Bevans 1988
The point we are trying to emphasis here is that regardless of how big your marketing campaign, in order to spark interest in your target market you need to be able to reach them on an individual level. You need to understand your target market, what influences their decisions and how you could tailor your solution to suit their needs.
Before you start any marketing campaign there are a few simple questions you need to ask.
Who is my target market? (the more specific the better)
What do I know about them? and more importantly ...
What don’t I know about them?
One of the best pieces of marketing advice we can offer anyone, is a mantra that we learnt from the World Health Organisation (WHO) whilst visiting the middle east recently over Christmas. That marketing mantra is -
“Do nothing – produce no T-shirts, no posters, no pamphlets, do nothing....until one has carried out a situational market analysis”
The WHO recognise that in order to influence people’s health behaviours they must first understand the factors that are influencing their target markets decisions.
How much do you know about your target market? Do you know enough to reach them on a personal level? If not, it’s time to do some market research.
Before developing a marketing campaign it’s critical that you analyse your market such that you don’t waste valuable time and money on strategies that don’t work.
While market research is not an exact science and can be a little time consuming as a general rule the more you now about your target audience the greater the chance that you will be able to make a sale.
In next’s month’s issue of Marketing Magic we will discuss how to conduct market research. In the meantime we want you to put pen to paper and come up with a list of strategies that you can use to help better understand your target market. Let us know your ideas so that we can publish them next month. Email your ideas
Troy Rocavert
