Five Major Marketing Control Techniques
by Irene A. Blake, Demand MediaRelated Articles
Marketing control is
used by small business owners to monitor and evaluate their current
marketing strategies to identify needed adjustments and set guidelines
for the future to achieve marketing and business goals. Although
businesses and marketing firms have designed many marketing control
techniques over the years, a handful of techniques stand out from the
rest.
Competitor Analysis
A
small business owner needs to know how his products, services and
marketing strategy compare to local, regional, national and
international competitors to retain existing customers and attract new
ones. Competitor analysis involves checking out the new products or
services offered by your competitors, examining their marketing
strategies and determining whether they are succeeding or failing with
their businesses. Use this information to adjust your strategies
accordingly. For example, you could hire a mystery shopper to shop at
your competitor's store to acquire information or visit businesses
similar to your own in other regions and speak with their owners to get
ideas.
Customer Analysis
Another
way to monitor and evaluate your marketing is to perform an existing
customer analysis to provide a detailed picture of the types of
customers buying your products or services. An analysis involves
gathering data about your customers during or after check out and then
tabulating this information in a spreadsheet for comparison. For
example, you might gather data about your customers such as their
geographical location, average age and sex. In addition, you might
gather spending habits data such as average purchase amounts, amount and
type of foot traffic before and after advertising and coupon or
discount usage.
Related Reading: What Are the Five Deadly Sins of Marketing?
Testing Research
Once
you identify a target customer base, you can determine the potential
success of a new product or service, the marketing methods needed to
promote and sell it and the financial impact of a planned marketing
strategy through prerelease group testing. One example of testing
research involves communication with a focus group of 10 to 15 people
from your target customer base. Ask them to discuss in general the
products and services they like and dislike to help you brainstorm ideas
for the future, or ask them to try one of your new products or services
and provide feedback.
Customer Feedback
Customer
feedback is a marketing control technique similar to testing research,
but instead of gaining insight into future products and services, you
evaluate customers' opinions of existing products or services and the
marketing methods you currently use. Customer feedback might involve
inviting your customers to complete a survey, offer opinions through a
suggestion box or respond to specific questions in-person or over the
phone after they've purchased a product or service. Other customer
feedback methods include asking your employees for feedback and
maintaining a list of the types of products or services customers have
inquired about that you don't currently offer.
Cost Analysis
Small-business
owners use cost analysis to create an overall picture of the cost of
existing marketing strategies to reduce costs, weed out products and
marketing strategies that aren't working and create a new budget to use
moving forward. To perform a cost analysis, look at the current costs
involved with all aspects of your business including inventory,
distribution and the current costs of your marketing strategies. After
you determine the costs, compare the numbers with your existing budget
and the costs of alternative marketing methods.
SOURCE : http://smallbusiness.chron.com/five-major-marketing-control-techniques-40619.html
SOURCE : http://smallbusiness.chron.com/five-major-marketing-control-techniques-40619.html
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar