Marketing that is Working Right Now: Customer Research

What is working right now in this tough market as the best, reasonable cost, mix for any organization is finding out who your customer types are (profile them) and then do the following:

- Events

- News Releases (not necessarily to the press)

- Web Promotion

- Radio Advertising

- E-blast Newsletters

- Direct Mail Advertising

- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

- Social Networking (Social Media Marketing, SMM)

All must be highly targeted at your top purchasing demographics and done as a campaign – not a series of unconnected media activity. It works right now!

The strategy starts by figuring out exactly who your buyers are and creating unique events for them, and people just like them. This article will cover customer research and future articles will cover the events and the media mix shown above.

Who are Your Customers? Once You Find Out, You Can Find More Just Like Them.

Find out the demographics and other information about your best customers. Check with your top sales people, look at customer records, hold focus groups with your customers, call them, poll them, find out as much as you can about the following:

- What is their household income?

- What is their age?

- Where do they live?

- Single, married, kids?

- Have they bought before?

- Why did they buy your product or service?

- Was there a particular benefit, feature, message that brought them to you?

- What media do they use: Which TV channels, radio stations, websites, magazines and newspapers, etc.?

- How did they hear about you? Careful! This is tenuous at best. Most won’t remember or won’t tell you accurately for a number of reasons but if most say the same thing it might be reliable.

- What are their favorite charities?

You’re looking for trends, not private or individual information.

After you figure out your best customer data, create customer profiles so you can use the information to:

- Create events to appeal directly to them

- Decide when is the best time to have an event and advertise

- Figure out where to have events

- Position your product or service vs. the competition

- Create a message to use to write news releases and other copy

- Target web sites you can use to use to promote (including social networking sites and groups)

- Promote on specific radio stations

- Get potential addresses to use for direct mail

Next article, Unique Events!