Marketing Pearls of Wisdom 1 – Good old Bill Smith!

I am indebted to Martin Stevens in my Basingstoke4Breakfast Group for this saying to kick off my pearls of wisdom

“When you want to sell what Bill Smith buys, you must look at the world through Bill Smith’s eyes”

Martin has been in business for a long time and often comes out with great sayings originate in his sales management background. This one particularly resonated with me as it’s a nice simple explanation as to the importance of identifying your target audience.

When I run marketing workshops. I find attendees are fascinated by the concept of a virtual client. This is effectively a composite of their “ideal customer” So for example she might be Alison, aged 34, married to someone in the City, drives a 4 wheel drive car, reads the Times; young children at private school, goes to the gym, the nail bar and out for lunch with her girlfriends.

All this helps you to:

• define the tone of your marketing literature (intelligent and emotive)
• decide where to place it (in the nail bar, the gym or the garage where she gets the car serviced)
• decide whether to launch an additional line – for example – something along the lines to reduce her carbon footprint. Would she care? REALLY? She IS driving a four wheel drive!

Yes, I know these are huge generalisations – but you’ll be surprised at how effective this is to keep your marketing on message…