THE MAKING OF MARKETS

part 1/2

It’s a competitive world out there and simply creating a great product doesn’t guarantee you great sales…..

Successfully getting to market can take a lot of planning, time and creativity to do well and effectively!

Getting Noticed and to Market

Thankfully with the advent of various online tools it’s easier to get to grips with some of this yourself and it needn’t have to be expensive. Lesley Gulliver from The Engine Roomshared with the CRL startups key steps to take when defining your audience and marketing techniques through “The Funnel” to market when considering your customers decision making steps and experience through to purchase (and then during ownership):

• Needs Awareness
• Information Search
• Evaluate Alternatives
• Purchase Decision
• Post Purchase

Each of these steps have an array of tools and techniques that can be utilised, depending on what the most applicable is for the audience.

Know Your Audiences

To be able to make informed choices for the marketing approach you need to understand, map and profile your audiences; How big are they? Who are they? Where are they? What are their preferences? This will help to choose the right marketing mix.

Consistency is Key — remember your brand rules!

In many cases it may be a mix of both online and offline engagement — with the use of social media and video for example, alongside public speaking or being present at key related events to network, demo and promote. Perhaps considering The 5P’s of Marketing will also help.

The Key Ingredients

When building a Marketing and Communications Strategy(and particularly as a startup), Kristina Glushkova from Makerhood, outlined some inventive and creative ways to build brand and product awareness cheaply, or even for free. This could be by identifying influencers who will promote your product or journalists who might write about it and you, perhaps even applying for an award or attending and speaking at events. For each of these different approaches it’s important to research who they are and how you might attract attention. For many it may be important to cut out the jargon and ensure you have a clear message relevant to them.

Let’s get Social

With the array of different social media tools available for free: from Twitter to facebook. analytics and scheduling tools and the platforms such as Tweetdeck and hootsuite to link and use more effectively.

Remember, your email signature is a free marketing space!

Perhaps you may want to set up a newsletter using a platform such as mailchimp or join relevant online communities. All of these offer various levels of usage and as a startup (and for many) the basic free service can often be enough!

11/01/2016 written by CRL