Well, this feeling occurs in areas where change cannot or does not know how to be accepted in organizations, in fact, this affects many aspects of the daily life of companies because in a few months managers or executives may come to realize that the market has evolved and their day to day has not allowed them to be aware of it, even losing the new references of their segment or niche and seeing how others operate in different ways, without them knowing where to start
Free tools for company strategy
Customer buying styles or motivations vary and at this point they have done so much that anyone who wants to see a customer as the one to sell something to has a % battle lost before they even leave the office door
Strategy and free tools
A few days ago I observed in a professional colleague his attitude, before a tool that I and I imagine that many Internet professionals use both independently as a tool only or within Internet marketing companies, and that nevertheless, in addition to all that has an impact on the strategy of the company
He was amazed and thought that something like this could not be reality, what a few years ago was a mere consulting tool and adaptations for marketing campaigns, now begins to become, as a value approach and data capture, in a basic tool of the company’s strategy, especially for SMEs that have not been investing in online advertising directly or who have been brought this activity by external consultants
This tool is the Google External Keyword, which allows us to know what are the searches performed by users during the last month
how does this tool work and what relevance does it have when making decisions and applying it to a niche or segment?
1.- One of the main strategic functions of this tool is the ability to size the market, not only from the point of view of the keyword or search performed by a user, but also from the point of view of analyzing the real volume of potential interested parties in the market from a qualitative and measurable point of view
That is to say, on a business scope that is defined by an estimated volume of key terms, it is possible to know what is the estimated market volume at a general level, at a specific level in the geographical area considered and, of course, it allows to know and segment a range of potential business niches that make up a specific segment
2.- It allows us to know the variables to which our target public is more sensitive, being able, based on the identification of these variables, to establish an estimated profile of the target buying public in the short and medium term, since these variables can also be influenced by other third parties outside our circle of influence and that are affected by environmental situations
3.- It allows us to work on the message that we have to define for this potential customer and to have a fairly accurate starting point of how this message should be, based on the use of these previously defined variables
4.- It allows us to approach or be present at the moment of the customer’s purchase decision, and by extension, it allows us to know the reasons, situations or specific moments in which the need or desire to buy appears in the customer’s mind
5.- It allows us to systematize the most appropriate marketing formula for each customer, and depending on the previous points, to work on both Cross-Selling and Direct Offer tools
6.- And depending on the way the company works, all this can be refocused to automate the sales process, to automate part of the necessary process at the supply value chain level to reduce the possible costs of both storage and lack of inventory
Let’s take a real-world example of application to the strategy.
We have been working with a client dedicated to wooden doors that about a month ago we raised their interest in addressing the online business, for them the word strategy was very nice but I remember how one of them commented and how does that feed? how do you get revenue?
Making a brief aside, it seems to me absolutely incredible the reality that many of the SMEs in Spain are living, there is a serious concern by many business associations in getting their productive fabric can somehow get up to innovation or new technologies
Continuing, what was done was to work a number of searches that we considered interesting for strategy, in this example only one of them is put. For this we used, among others, this tool and this is the result, regarding this specific tool (we also used some others, but this one was very interesting)
The search term we used was: wooden doors
These were the results, which indicate several important things
1.- The volume in Spain of people who searched last month (approx) this term was 165,000, however, the number of people who searched taking into account some characteristic of the product (interior or exterior) were 5,900 and 5,300 so these people are estimated to be the closest to making a purchase decision, this means approximately 3% of people who are looking for wooden doors to buy soon
2.- There are two variables that attract attention in the searches, on the one hand the price and on the other hand the catalog, sample, etc. so it is understood that the target audience is sensitive to both the price and the possibility of having access to a large number of purchase options for this product
On this, you can work on both the message whose strong points are
– interior wooden doors sample price direct offer and/or cross-selling offer) end date of the offer
– exterior wooden doors sample price (direct offer and/or cross-selling offer) final date of the offer
Several advertisements were chosen, two of them were the least effective, the most effective ones logically we are not allowed to put them on the blog)
1).-
Interior wooden doors
Large Sample Low Price
Special offers October
2).-
Exterior wooden doors
Wide Sample Low Price
Special offers October
On the other hand, this approach was extrapolated outside the Internet, with this message and different creativities to distribute in different commercial areas, from bars and restaurants, advertising in local media, leaflets that were given in hand, etc.
The result was a 600% increase in sales in one month, produced almost all in the last week, which was the first impact of the commercial actions, a month that was expected to be quite weak compared to other years and seeing how sales had been developing throughout the year, it was quite expected, in addition to controlled expenses since the media in which they would work had been previously planned and defined
and how can an action like this be defined as a strategy, if the above described is only a concrete campaign?
Well, the strategy consists of applying the method, the system, defined during all the months of the year and analyzing the data obtained in each one of them, on the other hand, making it possible to incorporate new marketing, promotion or advertising actions each quarter based on the market segment and the geographical area of interest. This has also been very well received by the company as they see it as very interesting to be able to work with different media, messages and approaches throughout the year and they see very interesting the possibility of working even in areas of merchandising for specific dates that take place in several of their municipalities of action
So in a way the strategy could be called, PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF GLOBALIZATION in a niche and geographically segmented business.
And as a final point of this post, comment that a very important part of this strategy that we talk so much about is the open mind of the entrepreneur and the desire to learn how to do things effectively, without fear of making mistakes, and taking into account that many of the people who make up the company must be involved directly or indirectly in this step forward as the information that many of them have of the environment is vital to establish a well oriented strategy, in addition to knowing well specific guidelines that may be relevant in the processes that end up deriving in the strategy.