I consider it an honor to commence from where I stopped. On my [last post]( in this community, I educated all my blog viewers on the importance of business opportunity/opportunities and how to identify them. Having cleared that up, let's look into marketing since it's one of the ways to boost business.
Dear reader, am advising you to continue reading because, there are many ideas you'll benefit from at the end of this lecture. Believe me, you'll be able to understand:
- What marketing is
- Who your customers are
- Their needs and wants
- Why you need to satisfy them
Without much time, let's peers deep into what marketing is.
Definition of marketing
Marketing is all you do to locate, attract and to ensure your customers patronage continuously.
While carrying out your marketing skills, there are some practical steps you must take to succeed. And they are:
- Know your customers
- Price
- Their pocket
- Location/place
- Promotions
- Type of product
- Packaging
- Identification
Having fish out the practical steps you must take, let's consider them one-by-one.
Know your customers: When someone patronize you, try to identify them next time. You can use words like Customer to show them you've recognized them. Also, try knowing your customers likes and dislikes. E.g, locally, I mean, in this part of the world, if you go to market, there are different types of tomatoes like : De-rica and breakage. De-rica is the one that is in good shape and clean(Costly) while breakage is the one that is pressed(very cheap). If your customer, whom we will identify as Customer A is the type that do buy De-rica, please, if you don't have De-rica, don't advice them to buy breakage.
Price: Avoid fixing high price to your products and services. Why? it can chase away both your present and potential customers. Therefore, be moderate and honest. Meaning that the price should be low enough to attract customers and same time yield portable profit.
Their pocket: Definitely, you need to know how much product they can buy and how often they can do so.
Location/Place: LOCATION plays a vital role in marketing because it affects the price of goods. Therefore, make sure the location can allow you to or pave way for you to easily introduce and bring your goods and services to your customers directly or indirectly. For easy accessibility, target using distribution channels like buying a machine. When I mentioned machine, am not solely referring to motorcycle, rather, I mean any means of reaching your customers with the product without much stress.
Promotions: It's only when you display yourself that people can locate you. Yes, from time to time, attract more customers through promotions. There are various ways of doing so. And they are:
- Giving people a measure of discount. E.g, Buy one get one for free or buy 5, get one for free
- Via advertisement. You can promote your various ways of rendering services to people on either social media platforms or other news media platforms like radio and television among many others.
Type of Product: You should know that you have competitors. Therefore, try finding out the type of product that will attract customers. Find out the need of your customers and endeavor to satisfy them. Why? Before the end of this article, you'll find out why. So keep reading.
Packaging: Remember, we're looking into various ways we can market our products so as to attract customers. Let me ask you, if you go to market to buy crayfish, you see 2 sellers. One stationed her crayfish in the table while the other one stationed hers on a nylon spread on the ground. Who will you buy from? The one on table or on ground? From here, I can hear you say, the one on table. And that's just it. So, even if your product is not attractive, the way you package it can easily attract good customers to you. The point am making can be compared to a beautiful dirty girl and an ugly well groomed neat girl. Despite the fact that she is ugly, her dressing and grooming must attract people.
Identification: While marketing your product, ask yourself if you do have any means of product identification. Locally here, there are certain products that many people are selling. E.g, Dental tooth powder. There are many producers of this dental powder in my area. For easy identification, each producer must tag a means of identification in his or her product. It could be his or her business name or any other product identification. This is important to help retain your customers and good name.
Now that we have seen what business marketing is and various steps one can take in marketing his or her product. Assuming you now own a business and have also followed all the above mentioned points of mine on how and skills to implement for easy marketing, the next important question is:
How and why should I satisfy my customers?
Honestly, customer satisfaction is not an easy task. Why? some customers are hard to satisfy. Some, in your presence does as if you're not satisfying them, but, inwardly, they are well satisfied. Others, are always ready to find fault while some are aggressive. Since some of them are in this form, let's check what you can do to satisfy them. Let's go....
How and why you should satisfy your customers
- Put your customers satisfaction ahead of yours. Remember, you need their money while they need your product. So, while you're important, your customers are more essential. Beware.
- It's only well satisfied customers that will come back to patronize you next time. Therefore, make it your priority to satisfy them irrespective of their badmouthing. Remember the adage that says: Customers are always right. Meanwhile, do whatever you can not to allow them move away from your shop until you must have collected the money from them.
- For you to make profits, you need to sale. And without your customers patronizing you, you're heading nowhere. So, always satisfy them.
- Another reason why you should satisfy your customers is that they too can serve as your informants. In a business, one must have competitors. Who are your competitors? it's those people selling same stuff you're selling. With the information you get from them, you can know the need of your customers, when to make an increment and when to reduce price.
- To maintain and satisfy your customers, you need to know their value and trades time. Yea, you need to know if they prefer buying at night, evening, morning or afternoon. Then, target that time to satisfy them. You can easily loose your customers if you don't put those things into consideration.
Having discussed tips on how to market your goods and how to satisfy your customers. Hope, you're able to understand the first 4 points I mentioned earlier. That's interesting.
My Advice
If you're a businessman or businesswoman, try implementing all the suggestions in this article. Hopefully, you'll succeed. Wishing you the best in your business.
Conclusion
My reason for writing this article is to help you all business marketers to acquire financial independence and to excel happily. Thanks. Byee