Today we're going to discuss how your product line and target audience will affect your marketing plan.

Product Line: First, take a look at your current product line. Is it attracting the customers that live in your store’s geographic area?  If there are slow items, consider dropping the line, focus more on what is selling. Then, find similar products and add them to the offerings. Prep your offerings for the store’s geographic area and the target you will identify. Then contact your vendors to see if they'll offer co-operative advertising. 

Target Audience: Find out everything you can about your current customers.  Yes, of course, name and address.  But also, email address, how much they spend each year, when they spend it and their social media status. Encourage your current customer's to follow your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc), so you can stay top-of-mind in their newsfeeds and help them refer their online audience to your business.

Also, another conversation with your vendors will help you find out who they think will buy their products. Defining your customer in the most detail as you can is important. It will help you decide what media will be best and how you talk with them. 

Stay tuned for Part Three of our Small Business Series!

Have you ever wished you could target your advertising to only the people within your delivery or service area? Or how about just marketing to the people who are most likely to be looking for your product or service? Well now you can do just that! 


The Oakland Press has partnered with Yahoo! to offer Oakland County businesses the ability to send out their advertising message to users based on their location (by zip code or region), age, gender, and behaviors! Now that's waste-free advertising! 


For more information, contact your Oakland Press Advertising Account Executive, or call 248-745-4595.

As a small business, you may never have taken a structured approach to advertising.  There may be an advertising budget that you outlined at the  beginning of the year, but you were well under or over that amount at the end.  Now that the economy is slow, you might be asking if it is doing any good.

The best approach is a structured advertising plan.  Compare the elements of a solid plan listed below to your market, your business and your customer.   

-Geography

-Target Audience

-Advertising Budget

-Media Types

-Marketing Message

-Placement

-Review

Today we'll start with Geography...

Make some measurements of the geographic market area that you serve and the people that live there. Find out who they are, how much money they earn, what stage of life they are in and where they live.

Consider how far your prospective clients are willing to travel for your products or services and use a free zip code radius finder to determine the area that you need to be geo targeting.

Geo targeting is the first step in ensuring that your marketing budget and efforts are waste-free!

Stay tuned for more tips from 

Morris in our small business series!

  

Meet Morris Hagerman,
Oakland Press Account Executive

The message you present in your advertising is the link between your business and your customers.  What you say and how you say it can be confusing.  But, the way to approach it is to keep to a simple message, create a vision of your prospective customer in your mind and consider the questions your current customers ask.

The first goal is to not tell them everything about your business.  You will use up valuable space in your ads if you do.  More importantly, you will lose the reader if you don’t get their attention immediately. The more information they have to sift through to find what they need to know, the longer it will take, and that will diminish your chance of getting their business.  So, focus on just one simple issue.

Next, think about the people that come to your store or contact you on the phone.  These are your current customers and there are more of them out there that you can be doing business with.  Keep them in mind because this will help you focus on a group of people that you can influence. 

What questions your current customers ask and what they want to know right up front is a clue to the advertising message you want to use. Cost certainly is always an issue, especially in tough economic times, but that isn’t the only thing they want to know. They need to make comparisons between the products and services you offer and that of your competition.  Are their questions about brand names, style, durability, installation or delivery options?  Take the number one question they have and make that the primary statement of the advertising.

If you have co-op available from some of your vendors, they may have requirements that you say things in a certain way.  This can be a very beneficial.  National brands spend a lot of money positioning their products in the marketplace and in building top of mind awareness (TOMA). Your message should be that you are the local source for the brand in the market. 

A picture, as the expression goes, is worth a thousand words.  Customers will more quickly recognize an illustration or picture than a few words of your message.  So use images to focus the attention and have the words in the advertising expand that message. An example may be a picture of a tire, then next to it the brand name and finally, something like, “Installed while you wait.”

In summary, everything you need to know to develop an effective marketing message is all around you.  Just use a simple message, keep your current customer in mind and know what they are asking about.  By following these steps you can be certain your message is right.

Complimentary Marketing Workshop

GROW YOUR BUSINESS ONLINE

All Metro Detroit Area business owners are

invited to attend our

FREE ONLINE &

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

WORKSHOP

• Do you want your business to be listed on the first page of Google Search?

• Do you want that high listing without paying a small fortune?

• Do you have a website for your business?

• Are you happy with your website?

• Are you meeting new customer & revenue goals?

• Can customers interact with your business 24/7?

If you answered “NO” to any of these questions, you should be

advertising online! Here’s how you can learn more:

Join Us Thursday, February 3rd

at the Courtyard Marriott Detroit Auburn Hills

1296 Opdyke Road ● Auburn Hills, MI

10am Workshop   ●   2pm Workshop   ●   4pm Workshop

RSVP by Friday, January 28 at:

http://fyioakland.eventbrite.com 

Hosted by: The Oakland Press, The Macomb Daily,

The Daily Tribune, Advisor & Source and The Voice Newspapers

What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

According to Wikipedia, “Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of search engine optimization, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.^” We’ll go over the details of SEO later (Check out this handy directory of Online Terms), but for now we’ll discuss why it’s important to be seen by the search engines.

First of all, you may be thinking that since all or most of your sales are made in store, you don’t need to have a strong web presence. Well according to BIG Research, “89% of consumers making in-store purchases in key retail categories have conducted online research prior to purchase.” This purchase pattern is often referred to as ROBO, or “Research Online, Buy Offline.” This could mean product research, price comparing or even researching the retailer. So whether or not you sell your products online, a solid online presence is essential to your business.

Search engines have a pretty tough job. It’s their responsibility to maneuver through the billions of pages of web content to find the most relevant results for users. When a user enters a specific search term, they are actively seeking a product, service, or information. For a business owner, there is no better way to reach your target market than to put your business in front of the person that is actively seeking your product or service.  So Search Engine Marketing is essentially the business owners way to reach out to the search engines and say, “Pick me! Pick me!”

Simply put: SEM/SEO means more traffic -> more traffic means more leads -> more leads means more sales -> And more Sales makes for a very happy business owner! 

Welcome to the Oakland Press Marketing and Social Media blog! The purpose of this blog is to provide Oakland County business owners with tips and information on how to create effective marketing campaigns straight from the source - the Oakland Press Advertising team!

Meet Michelle Mills, Director of Advertising
at the Oakland Press

We'll discuss How to Create an Effective Ad, PPC vs CPM, Search Engine Marketing, Blogging for Business, Social Media Marketing and much more! If you have questions or would like to suggest a topic, please e-mail us or leave a comment.


Thank you!


The Oakland Press Advertising Team