Step 1 Get clear on your marketing mix

You will often here someone on website refer to marketing mix. This refers to five P's of marketing. Product, Place, Price, Promotion and People. Any business who combines 5 P's effectively will be successful.

Who is Your Customer? In order to tailor your marketing and advertising strategies to appeal to tastes and interests of your market, you must first identify your customer. In order to do this, you it is necessary to conduct thorough research of consumer marketplace. Keep in mind, more information you have about your target market, better able you will be to develop a successful marketing plan.

A market profile typically uses primary and secondary sources to answer key questions about a potential market. A profile is a picture or an outline. Information that makes up social profiles of people in your target market is called demographic information, and includes: age, usually given in a range (20-35 years) sex marriage/partner status location of household family size and description income, especially disposable income (money available to spend) education level, usually to last level completed occupation interests, purchasing profile (what are consumers known to want?) cultural, ethnic, racial background

A clothing manufacturer may consider a number of possible target markets--toddlers, athletes, grandparents (for grandchildren), teenagers, and tourists. A general profile of each of these possible markets will reveal which ones are more realistic, pose less risk, and which are more likely to show a profit. A test market survey of most likely market groups, or those who buy for them, such as parents for babies and toddlers, can help you separate real target markets from unlikely possibilities. The Right Product What are your customer's needs? What do they expect to get when they buy your product or use your service? The right product is one that best fits their requirements. People who eat in restaurants want more than a good meal. They might expect quick service, a reasonable price, a vegetarian menu, a children's menu, entertainment, a drive through window, or to be identified with a trendy crowd. It becomes a difficult and probably an unprofitable venture trying to satisfy everyone's needs.

If you have identified your customer and listed their expectations, you can design your product or service around their requirements.

The more you fulfil your customer's expectations, better quality of your product. Think of your product or service as more than just what customers pays for. When you are planning your business consider how whole transaction meets customer's needs.

It is important to note that developing product or service COMES AFTER you have identified customer and their need. If you have an idea you think might be worth pursuing, develop concept only when you have determined a genuine need and interest in product.

Then let market help you develop it and strengthen it. Most small businesses fail because market was not enthusiastic about their idea and entrepreneur was too vested to listen to market early in process. Positioning your Business Positioning refers to image customers have of your business. The goal is to create a business image that enables you to position your business in such a way that, in essence, it acts as a natural magnet for your intended customers. A number of factors that customers often look for include: price (i.e. cheapest price, fair price, price for quality, etc.) assortment parking service sales personnel quality fashion convenience location atmosphere

Your overall position should emphasize those areas that your customers value most, and those which make you different from your competition. Pricing Techniques The importance of pricing can not be underestimated as incorrect pricing can often result in failure of a business. New businesses often make mistake of either charging too little or too much for their product or service. So to help you avoid making one of these mistakes, following section will outline some of guiding principles of price determination. Price is a key part of marketing. Setting prices is called pricing.

Pricing to Market Compare prices with your competitors for similar products and services. Set price range that customers will expect. You can use that market price range--what is acceptable to market--as a guide to set your prices. Businesses or people to whom you sell may also price to market by telling you what they will pay for your product or service. As you keep records of actual costs, cost approach to pricing will help you make sure all your costs are covered, which may not be true in a market approach to pricing.

NOTE: Be careful about under pricing in order to compete or make sales. Use competitor's prices to establish price range for similar products or services but don't under price; if your true costs are higher, your final prices will have to be higher.

From this fact it is not a reach to come to conclusion that merit of a graphic designer is based on performance of his or her designs. You may be able to put together most beautiful ad that world has ever seen, but if it doesn't make phone ring it isn't worth paper that it is printed on.

By giving clients designs that are not only attractive but, more importantly, that get them response they need to turn a profit, you are making it much more likely that they will be willing and able to come back to you for future services. In short, if ad doesn't make your client any money, you don't make any money in future.

The following text is a breakdown of different actions to take and ways to make sure that your beautiful design is also a big time moneymaker for both you and your client.

Chapter 1: “BE” Target Market

There is a monkey loose in your office and you can't seem to get any work done. The only solution is to catch little distraction and FedEx him back to jungle that he came from. Question: How do you catch a monkey? You have to get into his head, think like him. You have to “BE” monkey to find out what is going to bring him close enough for you to catch him.

What does an annoying monkey have to do with Marketing Design? Keep reading.

Every potential customer is like monkey. They are going to do whatever they want unless you can persuade them to listen to you. You have to get into their head, think like them, “BE” them. A monkey is a simple animal so you can probably get his attention with stereotypical banana.

Human beings on other hand are extremely complex. Then you add in fact that mailing list is targeted and it can get quite challenging. Following are a few examples:

1) Product = Wrinkle Reducing Eye Cream.

Who do you need to “BE”? Probably a woman over age of 40. Try it. Pretend you are a woman over 40 with crows feet (wrinkles around eyes, for all you guys) and they are getting worse and worse each day. Did you do it? Are you her? Good.

Now, how bombarded with advertising is this woman over 40 that you’re being? Just think about it. PLENTY! So how are you going to communicate to her in an ad to get her to respond?

You may have a headline that pushes button of how upset she is about those crows feet like, “Crow’s Feet Getting Worse as You Age?” You may want to show a before and after shot.

2) Product = New Golf Ball that goes farther and straighter than competition.

Your target market is Senior Citizen golf enthusiasts in state of Florida. So what is number one benefit of this particular product for that target market? To answer that question you should use three things:

• Reasoning

• Experience

• Research

In this golf case, in particular, I can tell you from others’ stories that older guy, straighter ball goes. Practice makes perfect and older people have generally had much more practice. Also, as people get older they start to lose strength over all. This means that they will start to lose distance on their shot. It is relatively easy to tell that distance factor is going to be biggest benefit and therefore should be focus of ad.

Sometimes it's really easy, most times it's not.

3) Product (Service) = Refinancing.