It’s also a good time to review your marketing plan. Evaluate your 2008 marketing strategies and determine which strategies helped you to generate leads, create awareness and to be profitable.
Also evaluate your Core Marketing Messages. Let’s look at 3 Core Marketing messages:
Target Market
Who are your messages directed to? Be specific about the gender, age group, areas where they live, etc. If you cater to a broad target audience, it will be costly to reach them all.
Problem Solution
What is the concern of your target audience? What solutions do you offer? This is at the heart of your Core Marketing Messages. If you can clearly articulate the concerns of your target audience, and you can demonstrate in a credible way that you offer solutions to their concerns, they will listen to you.
Benefits
As soon as you clearly determine what your target market wants, you can orchestrate a marketing campaign based on addressing those needs. Marketers often confuse features with benefits. It’s important to differentiate between them:
I want to share with you three secrets how to successfully communicate your benefits
- The first secret is to determine your competitive advantage. What do you offer that your competitors do not offer? Consumers are overwhelmed by advertisements. It is a cluttered market, and we have to find a way of standing out, and be more visible and memorable than our competitors.
- It leads me into the second secret “The style of communication". You need to be crystal clear and focused when you communicate our benefits. I will recommend that you use direct and straightforward language, and do not use fancy words that consumers will not understand.
- A third secret is to be so powerful in your communication that the consumer will visualize the benefits in their mind. Let me give you an example. Recently I was looking for a stronger moisturizer for my skin. The following Esteee Lauder advertisement captured my attention. It said “See skin glow with a fresh, flawless radiance”. It was so powerful that I visualized my radiant skin, and I immediately purchased the product. Everybody’s needs are different and when it comes to products or services people want to feel happy, younger, desirable, and successful.
Stay tuned for more discussions about your Core Marketing Messages.
Happy Marketing!
Ursula
