Developing a Consumer Marketing Strategy

Developing a marketing strategy with your customers as the main focus is a good move to attain better sales figures and market performance. Undoubtedly, the consumers are the force that can turn your business around, either into a big success or a sorry failure. To penetrate your target market in the right way, it is always best to first consider who really your consumers are.

Before the companies had seen the need to move to go consumer-oriented, marketing activities were developed solely to advertise a product, generate some sales, and build market shares, regardless whether such marketing activities formulated cater to what the consumers really need or not. Since the challenge to do everything for the favor of the consumers, all marketing strategies that are implemented are guided by the lone goal of selling several pieces of merchandise purely for the sake of the business.

But times had evolved and new strategies are implemented. Today, consumer-oriented marketing is fast becoming popular. And what it really implies is the development of marketing tools and systems that for one, provides for stores and distribution channel examinations. These tests are conducted so as to evaluate a particular store's suitability to carry a particular product.

Consumer-oriented marketing also requires businesses to check the pricing of their product or service, whether or not it is fitting to their general consumers. Doing so prevents businesses to overprice or under price the commodity they are offering, while giving the best value to the patronizing public.

But most importantly, the need to develop consumer-oriented marketing strategies causes businesses to specifically pinpoint the very people who need, use, and buy their product directly. And once they have a good idea as to who the main market movers of their products or service are, they can start to assess their exact needs, aspirations, and wants. Accordingly, they can attend to those things accordingly. This precisely is the main idea behind developing a consumer marketing strategy. To specifically develop a consumer marketing strategy, here are good steps to consider and queries to answer:

Is your target market segmented?

For you to start developing a marketing strategy targeted to your rightful consumers, it is best that you accurately group your customers into their specific categories. Are most of your consumers branding conscious?

Are your efforts just across the board to any potential consumer, or are you doing targeted marketing to to say Work at Home Interest Groups, or US Executives via Email or maybe Trade Companies in Canada?

Do they consider price over other factors? Do they buy your products to primarily gain its benefits? There are a lot of other buying factors your consumers may have. Try to analyze all of them to ensure that what you are offering answers specifically to their motivations for buying.

Which of the segments you came up with is the most profitable?

The moment you know the specific segments of your market are, the next thing you have to do is to check which of them are going to give you more business. You can then start prioritizing the actual people belonging in that category when developing your marketing strategy. The three good points to consider in determining whether or not the segment is profitable are its size, its congestion, and the group's purchasing power. The larger the market it, the more people can buy your product. The fewer competitors you have on that market, the better your performance will be. And lastly, the ability of people within the group to buy or avail of your product determines your actual profitability.

What are the distinctive qualities of the customers belonging in the specified segments?

After the segment is identified and analyzed according to profitability, the next and probably, the last thing you have to know are the attitude and the individual characteristics of the people under each category. If you know whom you are selling to, then serving their needs becomes a lot easier. And to attain that, an in depth marketing research is required. Doing so allows you to create accurate tools and systems to help you attend to your customers' desires. And if you can serve your customers in the specific way they want you to, your business will surely thrive for several years, if not decades, to come. Don't forget to take into consideration your customer's habits, values, and all other factors that influence their decisions. If you know all of about these, they you can estimate the longevity of the segment or if it is likely to shrink in the future. And of course, with these data at hand, you can create strategies that can work around the individual needs of these customers. Immediate and future campaigns can be then planned well so that it can create better impact to the segment.

Measure the satisfaction level of your customers

The last step in developing a consumer marketing strategy is reviewing your customer's feedback towards your product. You have to check whether or not you are successful in providing accurate solutions to your customer's individual needs by asking about their views, feelings, and thoughts first hand. If the results are not good, then you have to try in modifying your system, strategy, or even your actual product or service to make it the perfect things your consumers need. Developing a customer-oriented marketing strategy is actually a cycle. The whole thing needs to be repeated over and over until all points are perfected so as to make all consumers happy after purchasing your product or availing of your service.

Developing a customer-oriented marketing strategy is actually a step in tailor-fitting your product or your service for all your end users. From a certain viewpoint, it seems that it is the consumers that get the better end of the deal. But actually, that is not necessarily the case. If you are successful in molding your products to make it more apt for your consumers, then true enough, each of them would be happy with their purchase. But in the long run, it will benefit your business more. While fulfilling the specific needs of your underserved consumers, you are also inculcating supreme value with them. And possibly, it will be a start of a long-term relationship. Along with these, tremendous growth opportunities will certainly open up for your business.