Going to the Market
There is something to be said about customers who always like to buy from your business. Do you know why your customers like to buy from you? Then you know your customers' needs and expectations ... right? Well most businesses that have not completed a true market analysis or targeted a specific sector of the market for their customers. If you have not, you are missing out on some pretty amazing information.
In order for a business to successfully conduct business with certain customers, they must know who the customers are. If you don't know, then you can't service their needs and desires related to the products you sell to them. It would be a sad mistake to think your product would sell to everyone. So you will need to take specific measurements of your markets and define what it is they truly want. We will give you some ideas on finding out who they are and how to zone in on what they want to buy.
The first area you will need to get smart on is the environment in which customers will be purchasing products. So here is what we will lead you through to get there:
- Understand Markets
- Identify Your Target Market
- Customer Knowledge Profile
Understand Markets
What type of market are you selling or providing services in? Most businesses these days fit into one of three market categories: consumer, industrial or reseller. Each one of these markets has their own relational customers or buyers within it. For example, you could probably guess that if you manufactured large capacity gears that work with conveyer belts or large machines that you would sell to specific large businesses that needed these to operate. Then at least you have sliced out your customer segment. But you could start looking for additional markets outside your immediate area for potential expansion.
What you must do is break down your markets into smaller chunks to work within. There are probably a few ways to come up with this slicing up. One way can be seen here at the Warwickshire Rural Enterprise Network (WREN), a project of the National Rural Enterprise Centre (NREC), established in 1991 with private sector and TEC grants, to provide support to local businesses and communities. Although this is just one way, you can check it out here: http://www.nrec.org.uk/biztour/marketing...
A very common example is the athletic shoe industry and how they segment in two areas: Gender and Sport. You can see that gender will cross into different sports such as running, tennis and soccer. In fact, you could break down children by gender and also by sport and come up with another similar market but not quite as large.
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