Mar 13, 2021
What great marketing entails.
I recently facilitated a workshop for an SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) company in Kenya on a marketing plan. The company was working on coming up with a marketing plan. I was invited because of my experience working with both Micro and small businesses. I am currently working as a Livelihood officer, where I help clients start and grow their businesses. We do this by helping set up systems and structures.
I had one key objective of engaging with the sales and marketing team on the marketing plan. Remember, the trainees normally have all this information, and during the session, it is more of a conversation than lecturing. We focused on discussing the 3M’s of Marketing that are Market, Message, and Media.
Market
Here we are focusing on the target market. The first question I normally ask is, who is your target market? The generic answer that people often give is “anyone willing to buy my product.” For food vendors, they will justify that statement to everyone who needs to eat. True, so my follow-up question would be, have you sold any product to Biden, the US President, Uhuru Kenyatta, the Kenyan President, or even myself? So who are the major clients you sell to or are sure you will get a sale from?
An analogy I provide during my presentation is that of a lion during a hunt. It is presented with various animals to prey on. Nevertheless, given the variety, it narrows down on the animal visible to where he is. Lions hunt to survive, so they do not have the luxury to pick. I can imagine if they were to choose, they would be like, “today; I do not feel like taking wildebeest; nimekula sana, I have an appetite for zebra as my dinner.” Enough with my fantasies; once it identifies the herd, it narrows down to one prey with the highest chance of success. It can be a calf, a sickly prey, old or injured prey. Once it identifies it, it now boils down to the execution of its plan, which is all about focusing on the prey and going in for the kill.
As a business, just like the lion, you have to identify who your ideal client or customer is. To do that, you need to identify their demographic and psychometric details. Let me break that down; demographics is the study of a group of people or populations. To do this, you study/ask about age, location, gender, marital status, occupation, income levels, education levels, etc., in psychographic, i.e., the consumer’s psychological attributes of a person, e.g., Attitudes, values, interests, likes and dislikes, lifestyle and behavior. The deeper you understand your target customer, the better it is to know how to engage them.
Message.
Once you have identified your ideal client, know you need to identify what you will communicate with them. Messaging is about sharing what problem you are solving for your client, what needs you meet, or what desire you can fulfill. Hence, it would be best to speak to that particular client in a language that they understand.
When Steve Jobs, former founder and CEO of Apple, launched the iPod. He came to the stage in his usual jeans and a black turtleneck shirt. He then introduced the iPod by flashing it from his pants’ small pocket and said, “a thousand songs in your pocket.” That is what messaging is all about. He didn’t bog down the audience with the details of, you know, the memory is 5GB with Microchips that are thin plus other jargon. Instead, he did it in a language everyone understands.
What emotions will your message start with your client? Always remember customers buy for their own reasons, not yours. When messaging your client, the rule of thumb is 80% you educate and 20% you do your actual selling.
Media
This is where 90% of businesses go wrong. They start by choosing a media before identifying their target market and coining a message. It is akin to putting the cart before the horse. I get it! Everyone is in some form of social media platforms; hence, it is more effective in reaching out to your target customer at a fraction of the cost you would spend on the brick and mortar media channels. The various social media platforms have different usage and purposes; thus, you must understand various platforms when targeting the audience. The post on Twitter will be different from Instagram or linked in. In the end, clients are looking for engagement on those platforms, not just selling. Through this engagement, you are building a long-term relationship with your client.
The other media that people forget is face-to-face, where you are now presenting to a client and engaging them. This is also a very effective way of marketing to your target market. Other media are public media, print, websites, and email.
Conclusion
Peter Drucker once said that businesses exist to create customers, which means a business enterprise has two, and only two, core functions: innovation and marketing. Drucker also adds: “Marketing aims to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Any business must get its marketing right; this can be achieved by identifying the target market, crafting a compelling message in a language the clients understand, and choosing the appropriate channel to convey the message.
*The end.
