It appears that the number one business challenge is marketing. A lot could work for us in our marketing if we could be intentional about it. Winning in life and in business is intentional, and the marketing that wins must be intentional!
Many still lack the required confidence to make that bold move that would market their solutions to the targeted market in a way that would produce the desired result. It’s necessary that you break out of the marketing clutter and then fashion a better way to move most of your target market to action.
Understanding intentional marketing
Intentional marketing is a marketing approach in which enterprises are purposeful and deliberate in their efforts to reach their target audience.
It involves carefully planning and executing your marketing strategies, and plans with a clear focus on the intended outcomes.
Being intentional in your marketing means that you are putting thought into areas other businesses might be neglecting, so as to grow your business (and customer base) with purpose.
In other words, it is marketing with intent and intentionality. Here, you spend less and get more out of it.
Intentional marketing helps you to align your marketing efforts with a clear purpose to achieve specific goals. However, before you deploy this strategy, you have to be clear about your marketing expectations.
Clearly define your target market
Your first job is to define your target market. Who and where are your past, present, and future customers? You can’t market to the customers you don’t know, and can’t identify who they are and what they want.
You will have to identify and understand your target audience – their demographics, preferences, behaviors, and pain points. This will enable you to tailor your marketing efforts to resonate with what they need and care about.
When you have a better understanding of who your target market is, you will develop a clear goal on how to reach, relate and retain them.
The better you understand your target market, the better you are able to fulfill their needs, and ultimately win their approval.
What results are you gunning for?
It’s important that you are specific and detailed with what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts, and how it would impact your bottom line. You need to know exactly what you want out of your marketing efforts and be willing to invest the time and money in doing so.
Without a marketing goal and objectives, you wouldn’t know if all of your marketing efforts were worth it.
Every enterprise wants to increase sales but saying that you want to increase sales is not objectively convincing enough.
For example, when you specify that you want to secure ten new customers from a particular location and demography in the month of March, who will buy your product or service is quite clear.
The further you make clear your marketing objectives the quicker you actualize it.
…To be Continued
Tony Ajah is a Business Growth Strategist, and the author of BUSINESS SENSE, and ON BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR.
He maintains a personal blog, where he shares proven business ideas and principles for SMEs.
