Page 43 - Duct Tape Marketing

27Chapter 2: All About Customers

No budget — not even those of mega-brands like General Motors or
McDonald’s — is big enough to do it all. At some point, every marketer has
to decide to throw its dollars into the markets and products that have the
best chance of delivering results.

Viewing your sales by market segment

Break your sales down by product categories to determine what kind of
buyers your products attract. Then define the customer for each line.

ߜ A furniture manufacturer might divide its products into office, dining,
and children’s lines — each meeting the demands of a different market
segment and even employing a different distribution and retailing strat-
egy. When planning marketing communications, the manufacturer would
follow three separate strategies, placing primary emphasis (and budget
allocation) on the line that research shows is most apt to deliver top
sales volume over the upcoming period.

ߜ An accounting firm might sort its clientele both by type of service pur-
chased and by client profile. It might target individual clients for tax-
return business during the first quarter of the year, high-net worth clients
for estate- and tax-planning right after the shell shock of the April 15 tax-
filing deadline, and business clients for strategic planning services in early
fall, when those customers are thinking about their business plans for the
upcoming year.

After you know where your target markets are located, try to determine the
kind of products that are of greatest interest in each area. This information
can help you target your product promotions.

A motel owner may find that customers from a particular market area stay
predominantly at the hotel for only one night at a time and usually only over
weekends, but guests from another area tend to stay three nights and usually
arrive mid-week.

Knowing this, the motel might choose to promote quick getaway offers to the
weekend travel group, perhaps offering incentives to get guests to stay a
second night. But the motel wouldn’t likely promote three-night stays to this
market segment, as that offer wouldn’t fit the market’s proven interests.
Similarly, the motel would be wasting money if it marketed one-night offers in
the three-night market, because customers in that area are interested in
booking longer stays.

Table 2-2 shows how a motel might categorize its market geographically so
that it can learn the travel tendencies of each area and respond with appro-
priate promotional offers.