Marketing Diversity - Your Best Marketing Approach for Small Business Success
As a business consultant who specializes in working with small businesses, I often am asked about the best approach to marketing a small or even a new business. There are so many tools to choose from and the answer to this question can often be difficult. What I have come to realize, however, is that the best approach to small business marketing is one that is appropriately diversified. Let's first cover some of the basic aspects of marketing and you will quickly see how diversity can be an essential ally in the growth of your business.
Marketing can be explained in many ways and one that I really like is a method called the three M's. These M's stand for market, message, and media. Two of these three M's relate directly to a diversified approach to marketing.
When coming up with an approach to marketing, a small business must absolutely consider who their products or services are being marketed to. This is the so-called target market and, in most cases, is a part of marketing that benefits from diversity. Many small businesses make the mistake of either marketing to too tight of a niche or trying to appeal to too broad of a customer base. In the first case, diversity is lacking and, in the latter, diversity is taken too far. I'm a big believer in balance and somewhere between these two extremes is ideal for your small business.
To properly determine your target market and make sure it is properly diversified, ask yourself who your ideal clients would be. The answer may point to a smaller niche of consumers but consider also the peripheral markets who may also benefit from your products or services. As an example, consider a real estate professional who wants to specialize in golf course home sales. Sure, they may look at retirees as their primary market but they might also consider younger clients looking for vacation homes or investors who seek vacation homes that they can rent out. This diversified look at a target market can introduce many potential clients for this small business owner.
The one aspect where I feel diversity is often overused in the marketing message. Too many small business owners try to cater their marketing message to specific types of clients and this can create confusion if it is taken too far. For example, in the example above, the real estate professional might be better served to cater his or her message to all of the target niches, rather than trying to deliver a different message to each niche. This can help develop a business reputation as being adaptable and able to work with a variety of clients, a huge plus for many types of service related businesses.
Last, we have the issue of the marketing media. This is simply the means by which the message is delivered. There are countless ways to do this and my best suggestion here is to not overly rely upon one particular form of media. Your target market have a number of ways they can learn about you and it is critical to reach them in several ways. For example, a website, coupled with newspaper ads and an occasional radio spot is far more effective than just running ads alone. It's not rocket science but diversity here is extremely important, even if one form of media stands above the others.
When building and refining your own marketing plan, remember that diversity is appropriate for more than one aspect of marketing and can provide a tremendous advantage in attracting customers or clients that fuel the growth of your small business.