Well the term itself has been battered around in its industry on different aspects of it, I will focus this blog on the basics of marketing strategies. My personal definition to the marketing term goes as follows; The activities set forth in conjunction to communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings through a variety of implemented channels that are of value to consumers. I, myself adapted the term offering as a way to describe an exploited opportunity. Finding ways to get your message across and at the same time focused in on a specific target market consisting of consumers that will mostly be affected and really can use your product or service. The first thing one must do is analyse your current situation and understand the reason for the research. Companies conduct this research for a number of reasons which include, competitive advantage, loss in profits, or to raise sales forecast. What ever your situation may stand, moving forward is the way to go. While most research doesn't come for free its one of the reasons you should really identify why your research is needed. Next are the two most strategies used in the research which include Primary Data Research and Secondary Data Research.
Primary Data is all research done yourself through personal or cyber communication. It is information collected for the very first time to fit a specific purpose. This can be done by a variety of ways for example interviews, surveys, observations or focus groups. You may conduct on a 1 on 1, or group meetings even video shot outs(hint socialmedia is a great tool for that). Secondary Data consist of research that has already been conducted by any means of resources. Examples would be magazines, news papers, books, websites(like census). Secondary Data helps the entrepreneur better conduct his home work by breaking down the population which will consist of your audience. Collecting Primary Data is more time consuming, hard work(at times), and more expensive than collecting Secondary Data. I suggest you do your Secondary Data Research first and check to see if it solves your problems, if possible. You can also as well segment the population into customer profiles that should include Demographics, Psycho graphics, User Data, and Geographic. Demographics include age, marital status, family size, ethnicity, gender, profession, education and income levels. Psycho graphics include opinions, attitudes, taste, personality, lifestyle, and habits. User data consists of finding out how often a product or service even information is used, needed, or pursued. Geo graphics includes were your customers live and how far they are willing to travel to do business. You wont need a camel in the city now will you? So yes I hope I was of help thanks
