More Meaningful Marketing, Part 2

In this series, we will look at your overall marketing as segmented marketing. Here are the components:

• Mass marketing to a wide audience
• Target marketing to a narrow audience
• Customer marketing to existing customers
• Referral generation from customers and prospects
• Internet marketing
• Service marketing
• Alternative sales marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Event marketing

I've spent enough time with mass marketing. It's easy. Put the ad out and there it is. People respond to it and come in and you deal with them. Easy stuff. Expensive, but easy.

Let's look at target marketing. This is best done with a database to choose your prospects from and to target a select type of prospect that you want a selected message or offer to go out to. This is a great marketing method for commercial trucks because with all the different bodies, you can target those users that you think are the best prospects for that type of body and you focus in on them with your message or offer. Of course, this can be done the retail side of the business just as well. Perhaps you target certain demographics in the main database.

The key to effective target marketing is having the database. Without it, there is no effective target marketing. Of course, you could target certain publications and do some targeting there, but that wouldn't be my definition of target marketing. Spend the money on the best database you can buy and it will be very well spent money. Trying to sell a Cadillac Escalade in the newspaper is probably not very effective, but you can target buyers for this vehicle more effectively using target marketing.

Target marketing to me is extremely important. I cannot imagine running a commercial truck operation without a really good, effective regional database. It would be the very first thing I would buy if I went into a store to run the department. The very first thing. It is critical. If I am going to effectively move my inventory, I need to know who to sell them to. I cannot depend on them coming in, or driving by and seeing them. I could get lucky with that and this is a good thing, but I want to be much more deliberate than that. I want to grow and move lots of trucks to build my customer database and earn profits and the database is the only thing that will allow me to have that power and intention. You could put my office and inventory out behind the service department so that no one could see us and I will make it successful with my database and target marketing. Having visibility will just be a bonus.

This segment of marketing is not as easy and requires thought and planning, but it is far more productive in profit and sales--unless you just happen to have what's hot at the moment in sufficient quantities. That's such a transitory thing. Good luck. Take control and begin target marketing. It is also more cost effective. Tomorrow we move on to the customer marketing segment.