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Marketing Strategy and Customer Retention

By: Monika Nolte


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Whenever you talk to people about your business you are marketing. Conversations about what you do are opportunities to promote your business and increase sales.

However developing a marketing strategy will focus your efforts and produce less random results. It does two major things:

1.it will identify the different ways in which you talk to customers, and
2.it will concentrate on the ones that are responsible for most of your sales (the 80/20 rule - 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of your business and the other 80% account for only 20% of your revenue).
Your marketing strategy should help you develop what to say, how to say it and who to say it to so sales improve. Because timing is everything, your strategy should also tell you when to say it.

Marketing Objectives

Developing marketing objectives will help you focus on getting and keeping customers. Marketing objectives also involve how best to package your products and services, how much to charge for them and how to bring them to the market.

To bring your sales and marketing activities together more effectively, a marketing strategy helps you tailor your messages and put in place the right mix of marketing approaches you will use.

Knowing Your Customers

Understanding your customers, what their needs are and how you can satisfy those needs are the key components of a successful marketing strategy. There are three main ways to understand your customers better: (1) look at your business from their point of view. (2) Collect and analyse data to learn about their buying behaviour. (3) Simply ASK them what they think.

Knowledge is power. Regular two-way communication and your experience with your customers will tell you a lot. Targeted market research can build a more detailed picture of your target market and their needs. Market research can help you target people who will want your products or services and prevent wasting time on people who aren't interested in your offerings.

You'll also need to understand how your market works - for example how and where do your customers find out about your offer? From a well developed strategy, you should put in place ways to see how you measure up against the competition and what the new trends are likely to be in your market sector.
Your Marketing Plan

A marketing plan explains how you will put your strategies into action. Within it, budgets and deadlines are set, and it should tell you how you'll contact your target customers - through advertising, networking, trade shows, direct marketing, etc.

A crucial element of any marketing strategy is when to talk to customers. Understanding customers' buying cycles and timing your activities to fit those will save you money and maximise sales.

Finally, your marketing plan should look to the future - how will you follow up sales and what will you do to develop new offers. Regular measuring and reviewing what's working and what isn't allows you to set new targets as your market, customers and products change.

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Contact Monika at www.rhwhseo.co.uk/ if you would like to get more information on Marketing. Perhaps you would like something written for your website or blog. Contact her now at rhwhseo@gmail.com you won't be disappointed. She can help you get the exposure your website needs with well written articles.

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