It’s always worth a reminder of some basic marketing principles. Here’s a key one. Your target market is someone who, in the first instance, has a need for what you sell.
Here’s what people have been pestering me to buy recently:
- A vending machine*
- Health and safety services
- Fleet management services
- NVQs for my staff
- Payroll services
- Investment funding services
- And plenty more things that someone who works by themselves, from home, is never going to have a need for.
It seems to me that this is a panic reaction to tough economic times – buy in a list (or dig out that old one you got when you joined the Chamber of Commerce) and blast out untargeted messages that achieve nothing more than needlessly sapping your marketing budget.
Please stop. It’s a waste of money.
Better to invest a little time in defining who your target market really is and focusing your resources more tightly.
*It’s an even bigger waste of resources to argue with your phone-ee about the structure of their business – I really think I’m the one best placed to judge whether I have 125 people working for me or not.
Our Marketing Health Check is designed to identify the ways in which your marketing is not working well, as well as spotting opportunities for improvement. Why not see how you could stop wasting money on your marketing activities and turn them into the investment they should be?