From the course: Entrepreneurship Foundations

Marketing strategy

From the course: Entrepreneurship Foundations

Marketing strategy

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- You could have the most amazing product in the world, be able to change the lives of millions of people and history as we know it, but if people don't know about it, then it doesn't really matter. Having a clear marketing strategy is key to helping you find your audience and grow them. I like to use the three W's when I'm thinking about building out a marketing strategy. Number one, who. Who is my product or service for? I know, it seems pretty straightforward but you're going to need to think long and hard about this. For example, if you created a children's clothing line and I asked you who, you might say children but you would be wrong. Your who is actually the parents. Parents are the ones buying their kids clothes. So while your product is actually for children, it needs to meet the needs of parents. I tried to warn you. It's harder than you think. Consider all the angles before you ultimately focus in on who your key customer is. Once you find your who, you're going to need to ask where are my customers? When Whitney Wolfe first started her dating app Bumble, she knew her who. It was young people that were familiar with technology and online gaming. She then asked herself, well where would I find a large group of young people who are interested in dating and totally okay using technology today. She went out to college campuses, knocking on doors of sororities and fraternities to show them how to use the app. Notice, she didn't go looking in a city where young people are all spread out. She went to a place where she knew there were large groups of young people. College! This is a great example of finding large groups of your key customers and going in after them. The last thing you want to ask yourself is when. When is the best time for me to approach these potential customers with my product or service? Did you know that every single year there is one day where every pizza chain in the United States has their best day of sales? Can you guess it? It's the biggest football game of the year, the Super Bowl. More pizza is ordered on the night of the Super Bowl than any other day of the year. Knowing this, giant pizza chains like Domino's and Pizza Hut spend months coming up with perfectly executed marketing plans to make sure that you're ordering from them and not their competitors. Think long and hard if there's a certain time of the year, time in your life for conditions that arise when people would absolutely need your product or service. The three W's are great jumping off points as you begin to develop a marketing strategy for your business. To help supplement them, I'm including an Exercise File that will walk you through how to build your very own marketing plan.

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