Marketing Basics You Need To Know

Before you can effectively market on the internet you need to know about how to market effectively.

The #1 marketing mistake most people make is finding a great product or service and then trying to find a market for it. If you have something to sell before you have a target market, then stop. Don't make another move until you find the people who already want the benefits your product can provide.

The sure fire steps to marketing success is to first finding a target market, find out what they want and then get it to them. Find a narrowly defined target market, find out what their problem is and then provide the best solution.

Here are some marketing basics you need to know. The first is to understand the psychographics (reasons why people make the choices they make) of your target market.

To truly reach your target market, talk to them in their language. To gain an appreciation of the language of your buyer, let's look at the four different types of buyers:

• Belongers
• Achievers
• Imitators
• Socially Conscious

Belongers are primarily blue-collar workers who are patriotic, believe in hard work, and are family oriented and religious. Their core value is "Fitting In." A good marketing strategy for Belongers would be "Buy American."

Achievers are the "Establishment." They are successful, educated, hard working and career oriented with a core value of "To Be Unique." A good marketing strategy for Achievers would be to Emphasize that they deserve something special.

Imitators are younger buyers who imitate achievers. For them, image is everything and they worship symbols of success. Although they don't actually have much money, with imitators, it's all about money. Their core value is "Looking Good" and they are primarily Yuppies.

Socially Conscious people are educated and are all about "The Cause." Their core value is "To Be Smart." They value the environment and social causes.

Marketing to each group is all about Building Rapport and utilizes a simple four-step dialog of:

1. Build Rapport
2. Find the Problem
3. Increase the Pain
4. Heal the Pain

The best way to Build Rapport is by educating, not selling. You need to get into your customers head and turn their needs into wants.

To Find the Problem, remember that people buy value not products. The Value formula is:

Value = Perceived Benefit / Cost

Were perceived benefits are your solutions to their problem.

A good way to Increase the Pain is by increasing the bad consequences of not taking action. Make the customer feel psychological pain and they will react.

Healing the Pain of your customer is best achieved by offering benefits and value. Differentiate yourself by providing testimonials and social proof to establish legitimacy. Remember to focus on solving the problem and not the product.

How exactly do you do all of this on a website? Most websites don't accomplish these principles simply because they present a one-size-fits-all approach. If there are four basic buying types, the obvious solution would be to have four different websites. Since this is not practical, an approach that attempts to gather information from your visitors will go a log way in directing them to the areas of your website that speak in their language.