Recently, at the FOWA Trade Show, we were fortunate enough to host a Marketing and Branding seminar for the sanitation professionals in attendance. Although it was mostly a high-level overview, outlining basic business strategies for marketing your business, it was very well received!
Due to the amount of positive feedback that we received, we decided to publish several blogs on the 5 main steps to creating a brand strategy. From determining your audience to creating your advertisements, these blogs will provide valuable pointers on creating your own marketing strategy.
This first blog will be about finding your target audience.
Branding Stage 1 – Determine Your Audience
First, you need to be clear on what you’re bringing to the table. This is the foundation of your marketing message and the skeleton of your strategy. It comes across as obvious, but it’s really important to know you’re speaking to, and why! Ask yourself a few simple questions.
- What’s your company offering (septic and portable toilets)?
- Who will benefit most (business, construction, residential)?
- What problems will you solve for the customer? It’s also a knowledge that you already have. Chances are, you saw a gap in the market and have capitalized.
Now create a profile of the audience, based on these questions.
Creating “personas” is common in target market identification. You think about who would want what you’re offering the most, then create a set of standard personas to represent them, down to their age, location, position – you’ll even give them a name. Then, as you build out your marketing strategy, you can keep these ideal folks in mind and ensure everything you’re doing fits who you want to be targeting.
Getting to Know Your Selected Audience
A simple series of questions will help you build a profile of your ideal customer. The more specific you can be, the better. Why? Because brand recognition is good, but targeted advertisements have higher conversion rates, leading to more profit for your company!
- What does your ideal customer/client look like?
- How many employees do they have?
- Can they afford your services?
- Where are they located?
- Why do they want to buy?
- Are there problems that your company can solve for them?
- Where are the most significant gaps they need to fill?
- What does their buying process look like?
- Are they looking buy already, or do you need to convince them?
- How many decision-makers would be involved?
- Is there a long or short buying cycle?
- What unique insights can you find on how to reach them?
- Where are the decision makers spending their time? LinkedIn? Facebook?
- How do they prefer to consume their content?
- Are they at their desk or on the go?
- Do they like to read, watch, or listen to advertisements?
Of course, as the 1st step in building a branding strategy for your company, this one takes a lot of thinking and effort. Don’t let that get to you! If you can identify, understand and form relationships with your target audience, you will always succeed in your branding efforts.
Start with What You Know
We realize this is a pretty big first step, so we suggest looking at the clients you already have. Whether that means evaluating an email list, checking out your Facebook page following, or something else – try to identify some common trends between your clients and their businesses. If they’ve expressed enough interest in you to follow, subscribe to, or buy from you, then they are your target market!
Facebook page insights can help by showing the age, gender, interest and other data on your followers. The same goes for Twitter analytics, Google analytics, and any other social media. Between this info and your personal knowledge of your customers, you can build an audience profile in no time.
The Next Step
Make sure you tune in next week, as we go over Step 2 in the branding process – Establishing Your Position in the Marketplace!
As always, if you need help with our products, services or anything else portable sanitation related, contact us anytime!
Phone: (706) 864-3776 | Toll Free: (800) 241-7951 | E-mail: Office@polyportables.com