Five Elements for Your Marketing Campaign: Your Market
This is the final element of the five found in the Open Source Marketing Circuit Questionnaire. Apologies for the delay, owing to my recent hardware meltdown. I have since made a start on a more detailed exploration of you and your brand.
The last post in this series, introduced the fourth element, the Problem. This time the focus is on your Market, which is the people who are likely to buy from you.
The aim of the five elements is to help you think about your business at a deep level. The order in which you think about each element depends on the nature of your work. This order is the order in the circuit questionnaire and follows a logical sequence. However, many people may find a different order works for them.
The pattern I’m using is to describe the element in the circuit questionnaire, show how it can be used in marketing a cause and then use my business as an example.
Market
Identifying your market can be the most difficult step any business owner takes. I’ve certainly found it hard and I’m still not satisfied I have fully defined my market. However, here are a few guidelines.
First, there are two essentials all markets must share, whether you are selling a cause, a product or a service.
People Who Value Your Offer
You want to find people who value what you have to offer. There is no point in designing a marketing campaign to appeal to people who will never respond to your message.
If you have a cause, you will want to find people who are sympathetic to it. You may wish to persuade people who have never thought about your cause, that it is worth their support. There is little value in trying to change the minds of those who have already decided they do not agree with you.
People Who Can Afford Your Offer
The second essential, if you are selling something, is your market must be able to afford it. If you charge a lot, this does not mean you necessarily cut your price, but are you sure there are enough people out there who can afford it? If you don’t want money, this might mean you have a bigger market but remember if you make demands on time, for example, this may exclude some people.
Three Dimensions for Every Market
Every market had three dimensions. They are independent of each other; the characteristics of one do not necessarily correlate with the others.
- The first dimension is demographics. Can you define your market in terms of their age, sex, race or religion? This category may also include less obvious characteristics such as class, employment, hobbies, health.
- The second dimension is your market’s beliefs and values. This may include their politics or religion, for example. So, we can see these characteristics are independent of demographics. We can imagine a twenty year old white man and a sixty year old black woman who are both supporters of the Green Party. The reasons why they share these values may be very different but they might both sign petitions and attend demonstrations.
- The third dimension is their awareness of your cause, product or service. Let’s say your cause is to ban fox-hunting. The 20-year-old Green Party member may not have given it any thought and so has never supported a ban. He might respond if he can be persuaded to support it, so if you want him to support it, you need to persuade him. The 60-year-old woman may be enthusiastic about a ban but not know what she can do to support the cause. She doesn’t need persuading and might lose patience if you attempt it. But she may value a list of actions she could take in support of it. The younger man would simply not be interested in the list of actions unless you can persuade him of the cause. You can find out more about this in my post about the awareness ladder.
My Market
Here is a one sentence definition of my market, written a few months ago.
Local business owners or leaders of community organisations who started with a vision for transformation of their place but have lost track of it amidst the pressures of keeping the show on the road.
I believe this statement describes people who believe in my cause, the local economy and are likely to have the wherewithal to purchase my services.
There is little in the way of demographics because business owners and leaders can occupy pretty much any demographic. Their belief or value is their vision for transformation of their place. Perhaps I could mention the local economy here. They must know that they have lost sight of their vision through the pressures of keeping going.
My primary weakness, shared with many businesses, is that I don’t really know my market well enough. This is OK. You learn more as you get to know your market. I fully expect this definition to evolve as I make more contacts and discuss my offer with more people.
The value of the circuit questionnaire is that it encourages you to explore your business in-depth and by returning to it, to deepen your understanding of your business. It is the opportunity to revisit it that makes it such a valuable tool.