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Today,
you need to understand ... deeply understand ... the communities which are
seeking your products & services. By understand, we mean determining
the size & market potential of each community seeing your company, their
needs & wants, the product "bundles" they purchase along with your products,
their sources of expertise, their preferred media channels [how they go to
market], and descriptions of the community [demographics, lifestyles, &
business demographics]. By better understanding how your markets or
specific communities function, you are better positioned to touch, acquire &
develop them into profitable customers. As we teach at Northwestern,
the depth of your knowledge about a market is the key to your being able to
turn them into long-term customers.
To assist you in understanding
your target markets, MSI has executed literally hundreds of marketing research
projects designed to assess the different characteristics of a community.
From basic, informative profiling efforts to "get started" in better
understanding your current customer base or acquisition program to highly
sophisticated & highly effective community sensing projects, MSI has the tools &
expertise to evaluate, define, value, and target the communities & markets which
are most profitable to you and help you eliminate waste by removing prospects
unlikely to purchase. Take a moment to review these programs from MSI:
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Demographic & Lifestyle Profile |
To target markets, you need to "see" them &
understand both their potential size & their value to your company.
A demographic & lifestyle profiling project takes your database or a
sample from a marketing effort and does the following:
- Names and addresses are standardized & postal
corrected to allow you to use the information to build a
deliverable, accurate database
- Each individual on your customer file is overlaid
with 200+ demographic & lifestyle elements. These identify the
income & wealth, occupation & education, household characteristics,
home value & size, types of vehicles owned & their age, and
geographic characteristics. In addition, we overlay 100
lifestyle variables describing the interests, activities, and
hobbies in each household. To view specific variables we use
in most profiles, click <here>
- As the overlay processing is occurring, we work
with you to determine key measures of success - and profitability -
we can use to identify the best and worst markets within your
database or marketing population
A demographic profile takes this data and creates a
descriptive profile of your best and worst markets. In the
evaluation, we identify the characteristics which define your most and
least profitable markets, identify micro-markets which are worth
exploring in future marketing programs, identify the total size of your
high value markets, and provide you with testing and database
recommendations to both increase your market share but also to improve
the quality of your database. For most MSI clients, starting with
a descriptive demographic & lifestyle profile is the lowest cost & most
effective way to begin sensing your community markets. Click
<here> to inquire about market profiling |
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Community Sensing & Valuation |
Sensing the high value communities requires you to
"get inside the minds" of your best communities to understand who they
are, what they purchase, what sources they use for expertise &
information, media channels of choice, how they interact with other
community members, how active they are within the community, and the
rate they interact with you and other community companies/members.
In a Sensing & Valuation project, MSI works with your marketing team to
conduct a series of web surveys to both your database markets [current
customers] and a representative sample of your consumer or business
markets. The results of the survey are statistically analyzed to
create the key communities attracted to your company's products.
Once the communities are "formed", we analyze the survey [& overlay]
data again at the community level to determine:
- The revenue, products / product categories, and
profits generated by each community
- Each communities potential size in the US [or
other] marketplaces
- The demographic & lifestyle characteristics which
define each community & contrast it from other communities
- The media channels & specific sources of
information used by community members to learn about your types of
products & services
- The different types of interactions occurring
within the community & the frequency it occurs
- Specific community buying cycles & purchase
bundles which contain your company's products
- Information on the types of engagement devices
which work best on your website with each community
Once completed, the results of a Community Sensing &
Valuation project is used to begin developing more intense relationships
with more members of your highest value communities. Initially, it
involves developing your web site and PPC marketing to engage specific
communities. This includes developing blogs, bulletin boards,
e-newsletters, e-communications, and community specific tools to engage
them and move them to interact with you. MSI then works with you
to add acquisition marketing programs specifically targeted to these
high value communities. This grows market share in your marketing
communities with highest profitability and moves you towards developing
high value information, tools, and products which keep them involved
with your company over a long period of time.
Click
<here> to learn more about our successful Community Sensing &
Valuation projects and learn how they have benefited both consumer and
business focused companies. |
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