This article aims to help you understand some fundamental concepts so that you can carry out a successful identification of the most lucrative markets for your activity, in addition to being able to effectively identify and relate in an orderly and homogeneous way the consumer groups that may be your best clients.
Marketing includes three very important tasks for your company.
1. Identification of lucrative markets.
2. Market research.
3. Development of a marketing strategy.
So let's start with the concepts of the Identification of Profitable Markets.
For example, if you dedicate yourself to producing a good or service that from previous work experience, you know that it is consumed by people who have high incomes or who belong to a certain economic stratum, who generally live in the most elegant neighborhoods of the Large cities in the country, has already identified where the people who can become its best customers may be; therefore you have already identified one of the lucrative markets for your business.
If your company has been in business for years, you may be wondering; Why do the exercise of identifying lucrative markets, through the identification of the best possible customers?
Well, if you have thought about expanding your production, or manufacturing new products apart from the ones you already have, you need to be aware that it is very advantageous to do this type of strategic practice.
In other words, both when starting a business, and when you want to expand (increase production) or diversify the offer (manufacture of new product lines), it is vital for the project to identify new lucrative markets. That time may soon come for your company. Be prepared.
Reflect and think about the skill that exploits or can exploit in your market, and what you do better than others in your field and it is very difficult to be copied from you.
What do you do better?
That skill will be the Most Important Quality of your Company, which will allow you to satisfy certain consumer needs better than your competition. For example, the quality of the service, the knowledge of the brands or their specialization in one of them, compliance in the delivery of the works, etc.
Once you have identified the quality of your company, think about the function of your products, that is, what your products do or what uses can be made of them. If they are to rest or to distribute information or to produce other goods, etc. Anyway, make a list as wide as possible.
Now that we know what needs we can cover with the product that is produced, ask yourself, who has those needs? Just like before, run a scan as wide as possible. You may find more than one market for your products.
This is how lucrative markets are widely described, as the people who consume the type of product and who can be part of the market of our business that with its differentiating quality can better serve them.
We already have a first approach to the market and a database of our potential clients.
Now let's land this work to the reality of our responsiveness. If the list of possible clients is very wide, we must reduce it to a size that we can attend to. Since it may not be manageable or simply the identified market turned out to be very broad.
There are, apparently, some limits that arise that prevent us from entering some markets.
Technical Capacity of the Company: Refers to the level of knowledge and technical skills of the company (of all personnel working in the company in all areas). If you do not know a special technique for working on any material or are not aware of any organizational technology that makes it easier for you to adapt to a special situation, this will limit your market. On the contrary, the more skills you have the greater the market you can satisfy.
Installed Production Capacity: Some markets require a fairly large volume of products that exceeds our capacity. In this way we cannot take responsibility for satisfying them and our market is limited.
Lack of Raw Material: When it is difficult to find the raw material to cover the needs of an order, it is most likely that we find a limitation for our company in this type of product.
Lack of Capital: Perhaps the most common among micro-enterprises, if we do not have the money for machinery, labor, raw materials, etc. It is very difficult to fill some orders. We must be aware of what size of orders we can meet and how available to us is the capital that we need.
Location of the Company in Relation to the Market: there are some markets that require the payment of transport to get the products to it. Freight charges increase the price of the items upon arrival at the destination. It may not be possible to compete with local production for prices.
Focusing on key customers is vital when a company is seeking market positioning.
Since we have our market reduced to a manageable size we can move on to the next point, which is Segmentation into Homogeneous Groups of Consumers. Homogeneous refers to the fact that the elements of the set must have similar characteristics to each other.
Let's divide the market into consumer groups. For this we can discriminate them by age, sex, educational level, profession, economic stratum, etc. The case is that the constituents of a group can have one or several characteristics in common.
If we have our market divided into homogeneous groups, then we will be able to know it better, know more precisely the needs of that group, better target the promotion and advertising of our product, and the best, detect opportunities in unsatisfied demands.
Other ways to discriminate the market are: by geographical location, the climates in which they live, by specific tastes, etc. In this way we adjust the qualities of our products so that they better adapt to the environment in which they will be offered. Consider your product and you can also divide the market between those who prefer it for its price and those who value its quality more to consume it.
The most common way to divide a market is by income level, measured over a specified period of time. So we have high, medium and low levels. But consider that the one with the highest income is the smallest and the one with the lowest is the most numerous.
The specialists in the subject have identified the economic strata and have related them to their values and characteristics to give them a more practical character from the marketing point of view. So the high-income levels are called the Promotion Zone, in which the competition strategy is propaganda. The average income levels are known as the Prestige Zone, in this strip you can achieve better results if the quality of your product is superior and appreciated by the customer. Finally there are the low-income strata, identified as the Volume Zone. The safest thing is that here what you prefer is a price low, so if your product is aimed at this area, it is recommended that you compete with prices.
You have already seen that the identification and segmentation of markets is a very useful, practical and user-friendly tool. It is a matter of initiative and conscious application of the concepts.
