Your Product – How Do You Sell It?

However good your idea is, however solid the service you provide for your customer, it’s not going to become a success if you don’t have a specific and effective strategy for selling it. This is called your Go to Market strategy and it has to describe how you’re going to communicate with your customers and convince them they’re going to spend their money on your brand. It’s a vital tool for your business and it’s well worth getting some business strategy consulting help when you’re putting it together. Today we’re taking a look at what goes into one.

Learn Your Audience

Knowing who your audience is is vital for your selling strategy in particular, but it has benefits across your whole business so investing time and resources in learning about them is never wasted effort. Market research is a step you cannot skip, and paying for help from a market research agency is often an investment that will repay you many times over in sheer insight. They have the reach to access a broad swathe of the public, not just people who are already your customers.

When you know who your customers are, you know their spending power, you know their priorities and you know what they find persuasive so you can begin to work.

Messaging

Once you know who you’re talking to, you can come up with messaging that appeals to them specifically. Think about who you’re selling to – are they focussed on savings and economy? Are they willing to pay more for a better service? Is your product entering the market as a reliable everyday necessity or a luxury treat?

Answering these questions affects how you should word your adverts and the creative side – photos and video. Think about the difference between a Marks and Spencer tv advert and a Lidl ad – luxury goods often don’t name a price at all as the quality justifies any expense and the absence of a price weeds out customers who are less likely to convert. The Lidl ad lives and dies by its cheap prices, so if you’re making a value play, make sure you’re actually able to proudly wear your price on your sleeve and it doesn’t suffer from comparisons to your competitors.

Where?

The next thing to think about is where to place your ads. If your strategy doesn’t account for where your audience spends its time (online and in the real world) you’ll likely find yourself spending a lot of money without much to show for it. When you know where your customers spend their time, and when, you can optimise your ad placements to reach them when they’re really paying attention – next to their crossword on their commute, popping up on Twitter during a tea break.

Audience Segmentation

The best selling strategies aren’t single strategies. Don’t treat your audience as a monolithic block – work out how they differ. If your product appeals to homeowners in general you can get much better results by dividing them into age groups, for example, and selling to 30-somethings in a different way to how you appeal to retirees. Get specific with your go to market strategies and you’ll reap big rewards.