Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy identifies customer groups which a particular business can better serve than its target competitors, and tailors product offerings, prices, distribution, promotional efforts, and services toward those market segments. Ideally, the strategy should address unmet customer needs that offer adequate potential profitability. A good strategy helps a business focus on the target markets it can serve best.

Target Marketing

Owners of small businesses usually have limited resources to spend on marketing. Concentrating their efforts on one or a few key market segments - target marketing - gets the most return from small investments. There are two methods used to segment a market:

1. Geographical segmentation - Specializing in serving the needs of customers in a particular geographical area. For example, a neighborhood convenience store may send advertisements only to people living within one-half mile of the store.

2. Customer segmentation - Identifying those people most likely to buy the product or service and targeting those groups.
Managing the Market Mix

Every marketing program contains four key components:

• Products and Services
• Promotion
• Pricing
• Distribution

These are combined into an overall marketing program: Next Target Marketing (Continue)