Targeted Marketing
Why is targeted marketing so important for your business?
Making sure that your company message reaches a wide audience is important, however it is critical to reach the right type of customer and offer them reasons or incentives to choose you over the competition.
But what are they making a decision on?
Which offers makes your company stand out?
Do they need your services?
Are you offering value for money?
Kettering Motorist Center is an independent garage with a strong customer base and have built lasting relationships with their clients over time.
The garage has steadily grown and the next step for directors Tim & Richard Hartley was to start attracting new customers from the surrounding area and offering new products to existing clients.
After a quick survey in the centre of Kettering it was revealed that even though KMC had been operating in Kettering for over a decade, the majority of people asked were unaware of the location or services that KMC can offer. It seemed that KMC may be missing out on the customer base of Kettering itself.
Attracting New Customers:
With any marketing its important to know how your results can be measured. One of the best ways to do this for KMC was to offer large firms in the area staff and family discounts. The employees simply show their staff discount card to receive discounted MOT and services, so it is easy to see where customers had heard about KMC and which companies would be worth offering staff discount to in future years.
Another was to start advertising at Kettering train station. The advert here offers customers free lifts to the station in the morning after dropping their cars off. Only train users would've seen this offer so is a sure way to check where the new clients have seen the marketing.
Sponsorship was another option that KMC wanted to explore. So they decided to start sponsoring the Kettering Rugby Club. I created artwork for the match day programme, and a TV advert which would be shown in the bar area during match and training days. KMC have also offered Kettering Rugby Club members discounts on MOT's, services and mechanical work. Which is again a tangible way to see if this marketing is creating more customers. KMC are planning more advertising and sponsorship with the rugby club in the future to build up a lasting relationship with them and their members.
Offers For Existing Clients KMC regularly send MOT reminders in the post to their customers. This was a good opportunity to offer a discounted winter check up service and let them know about some offers on new car accessories like new wiper blades and tyres. It was also a perfect opportunity to give information about a new engine and air con cleaning service that KMC have recently decided to trial.
When the customer presented their letters to the desk they were given the discounts and products immediately enabling Tim & Richard to see where their customers were seeing their offers and more importantly acting on them.
Online Marketing
Another place KMC needed to start marketing their services on was their social media stream. After choosing facebook as the platform to concentrate we decided on a few things to start with.
Tim decided to start sponsoring a young go kart driver called Chase Sharpe, in return KMC could share his facebook posts and give the KMC followers something to look forward to reading about.
KMC also use facebook to do some before and after shots of engines which have been cleaned using their new terra clean equipment. This has been very successful and has created an unexpected amount of enquiries and new business for the team.
KMC also decided to run a giveaway 'like and share' competition to boost the page and create some more interest around KMC. This has boosted the profile for KMC on facebook and is great platform to step up from in the coming few months.
Brand Familiarity
Through out all of these different marketing strategies I made sure that all of the graphics were consistent with the KMC brand. Subconsciously customers will build a picture of your company and products based on the messages being sent out through your marketing.
This kind of familiarity often means that a relationship has developed between you and your customer well before either of you have shook hands. It also means that the customer already has a certain expectation of your company and services and to create a trusting relationship these expectations need to be met.
By consistently communicating your services and building a brand your customers can trust you can start to develop the lasting relationships your business needs to thrive.
