 Your Business Will Take Root through Grassroots Marketing
By: Marna Courson
As the nation continues to endure a soft economy, marketing your business product or service continues to be a challenge. Resources remain tight, forcing you to stretch your marketing dollars. Given the current business environment, it’s important to turn each community in which your business is situated into a local market.So-called grassroots marketing is taking root rapidly. It will help enhance consumer awareness and boosts your firmÕs brand, whether itÕs that of a Fortune 500 corporation or a neighborhood tea shop. But this effort requires planning, focus and consistency. Our culture is saturated by information. Some surveys indicate the average consumer daily receives more than 8,000 calls to action, requests for aid and invitations to purchase services or products through broadcast, print or internet advertising, news stories or through direct marketing. By considering six key elements as you develop your marketing plan, you will ensure that your message, the vital currency of your marketing efforts, reaches the right audience and has the right impact. 1) Know your goal. Be sure you know precisely what you want to achieve through your marketing campaign. A solid plan produces not only economy of action; it will keep your campaign focused and ensure that it does not fall into a scattershot, desperate and, ultimately, unsuccessful effort. 2) Know your product. Whether you’re promoting a political candidate, a new brand of toothpaste or a cleaning service, a solid understanding of your product is vital. Knowing your product ensures that you can speak with authority and present the merits of your product clearly and succinctly. 3) Know your audience. Before you craft your marketing message, be sure you know the audience you want to reach and the language and attitudes that audience will respond to. Telling a potential customer that the Hot New Thing is “da bomb” may be a great way to hook street-savvy twenty-something’s, but it won’t sell joint relief medication to aging Baby Boomers. 4) Know the medium for your message. A particular medium calls for specialized tactics. Writing and planning for radio takes a different set of skills and a different mindset than writing and planning for print or specialized cable television. Also, be aware of the stratification and segmentation of the audiences addressed by each medium. You may write a radio commercial that works well for stations that appeal to talk-show listeners in the 35-50 age bracket, but it wonÕt be appropriate for your twenty-something country music lovers. 5) Know the benefits of each strategy and tactic in your marketing plan. Radio or print advertising will help boost name recognition. An article in the newspaper or coverage on the local TV news station will enhance credibility. Leveraging the news media story by sending out a targeted news release to generate consumer awareness can boost local traffic, increase community awareness and enhance consumer loyalty. A mailer that shows up in your post office box gets directly into the hands of the consumer and if the message is targeted to the market segment to which you’ve sent it, and designed and written appropriately, it may move the recipient to a desirable action. Permission-based internet marketing is a similarly focused, personalized marketing strategy. 6) Know your message. Be sure your message is appropriate for the audience segment you want to reach. Rather than simply saying: “Buy our product!”, your marketing should create a specific perception in the observerÕs world-view for the product. You may want to create a world made better by the existence of the product and provide the consumer with a call to action not only by saying “Buy this product,” but also by telling the consumer why, how and when to do so. Or you may want to make the consumer feel she is smart, sexy, ahead of the curve or intelligent by connecting to the product. As you prepare your marketing campaign, remember that consumers tend to be more comfortable with information presented through a local slant about local organizations rather than through slick, impersonal promotions. Let grassroots marketing help grow your business. Marna manages CCI’s business and development, and leads the firm’s strategic communications planning and crisis management teams.
Article Source: http://www.flourishmagazine.com
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