What Are the Five Principles of Marketing?

A client is buying your product or service to meet their needs. That's obvious, but are you applying it to your market strategy? Repeat customers spend approximately 67 percent more than new customers. To attract new clients and turn them into repeat customers, you must focus on those clients. Think about your product. What is it about your product or service that could benefit your potential client?

For example, say you own an online pet shop, and its focus is on all-natural supplies. You need to market your pet shop in a way that captures the attention of pet owners who live an all-natural lifestyle. You don't want to target just any pet owner because some don't subscribe to an all-natural lifestyle and you would be throwing your dollars out the window. Always have a target audience in mind when designing marketing campaigns.

Knowing your target market is one of the most critical marketing principles. If you are targeting the wrong audience, your business is going to suffer. To figure out your target market think about your customer base and what type of customer would be ideal. Next, look at your competition and who they are targeting. You don't want to copy them but taking a look at who your competitors are targeting may reveal customers they are overlooking that you can appeal to. Analyze your product or service and list its benefits. Now, determine how each benefit can solve problems for your customers.

While targeting your market, don't forget about demographics. When applying demographics to your marketing strategy, think of the age, location, marital status, gender, education level and income level of your target group. Demographics are vitally important because they get you in tune with your ideal customer. For example, if your product or service is on the pricy side, you will need to consider income levels, or if you need to target middle-aged individuals, you don't want to waste your marketing dollars on targeting the younger crowd, especially if they can't benefit from your service

It's only natural for someone to want to see value in something before they commit to a purchase. Many companies overlook how they can communicate their value and go straight to launching their business and flooding customers with emails and social media with advertisements. If you want to show your true value to your audience, get creative. Offer some tutorials or advice relating to your product. Create a blog and update it on a regular basis with relevant information that could be helpful to your audience. It also wouldn't hurt to add some testimonials to your social media and marketing strategy. Video testimonials are a major plus and are more realistic.

Growing a network in any business is a huge deal. You should always have prospects in your pipeline. Maybe you offer a service and don't want more than five clients at one given time. That's fine, but you should never stop marketing. If you don't make marketing a consistent strategy in your business, you will lose prospects and not have any potential clients when one or two decide they don't need to work with you any longer.

A marketing goal should aim to gather information from prospects so you can market to them, and get them subscribed to your email list. Consider providing articles and other helpful information through email, your website and social media to keep these prospects connected.

When someone trusts a company or gets to know them, they are more apt to purchase. Your prospects likely receive an overwhelming amount of marketing emails every day. Make your marketing strategy stand out.

For example, keep in touch with your prospects, never fail to educate them and provide solutions to their issues that relate to your product or service. Offering customer rewards or prizes can also help build relationships with customers who will want to stay in the loop for the chance to win a prize or other reward in return for their loyalty to your brand.