How to know if you are marketing to the wrong group.

One of the greatest things you can learn with marketing is your target audience. Have you ever put together a great marketing strategy and it failed? Many mistakes marketers make is that they market to the wrong group. How do you know if you are marketing to the wrong group?

No result from marketing campaign
If spent a lot of time and energy learning who you think your target audience and then send out a great campaign and no result comes. You need to evaluate what happened. Did you send out your direct mail pieces at the wrong time? Is the economy in a recession? Did you try targeting a new group? A lot of factors can be a result of nothing returning from your campaign, you just need to find out what effected your campaign.

Did you spend time to know your target audience?
If nothing returned from your campaign, you need to ask yourself if you targeted the right group of people. Marketing to the wrong group will cost your company hundreds or thousands of dollars. Spending the time and energy to learn who your target audience is will greatly impact your campaign.

Put yourself in your customer's shoes. Look at who your current customers are and what products they typically purchase. Think about why they would want to purchase your products or services. If you find yourself marketing to the wrong group, it can spell disaster and cost you your job.

Marketing is a long-term investment
Think of marketing as a long-term investment. Make sure you have all the pieces to the puzzle planned out so you don't end up marketing to the wrong group. If you want to target a new group of clients, do a small test sample. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on a campaign, try picking out a few hundred potential clients and sending them promotional materials and evaluating the results you gain from them. If nothing is retuned, then you are marketing to the wrong group.

Partnerships
If your company is looking into marketing as a partnership with another business, take a look at who you're partnering with. You don't want to team up with acompany who won't help yours in any way. It can spell a PR disaster if you team up with a company who declares bankruptcy or suffers from poor PR. They may give you some new potential clients, but without proper research, you may be looking at a disaster. Take some time to look at other companies who have successful partnerships and learn from their experiences. If they are marketing to the wrong group, who's to say you won't follow suit.?

How to avoid marketing to the wrong group
Let's go over some tips on how you can avoid marketing to the wrong group.

-

• Know your audience


• - Know your products and services


• - Spend time doing research


• - Give yourself plenty of time in focus groups


• - Do a test run on a small group of people before you blitz the market


• - Evaluate potential loss for marketing to the wrong group

It can sometimes be a gamble if you are just starting out to know who your target audience is. Allot some money if you make the wrong decision and end up marketing to the wrong group. Just remember to learn from your mistakes and avoid them the next time! If you find yourself at a loss for marketing to the wrong group, try hiring a consulting firm. They have dealt with many companies who have marketed to the wrong group and have some good strategies to try out.