The 90/10 Marketing Rule

I recently read a great article by Robert Allen that talks about a common mistake made by many beginning marketers . Although he specifically writes about internet marketing, his key points apply to any marketing program. There are three key questions you must answer in any marketing campaign:
1. Who is your target audience?
2. What do they want?
3. How can you motivate this target audience to act now?

As this article points out, many business owners spend 90% of their time creating the perfect product and only 10% of their time finding the perfect audience. I see this all the time – painstaking hours put into product development and minimal time put into marketing. This needs to be reversed to maximize your success – spend 90% of your time finding your market. Do research to answer the 3 questions above. People don’t just buy because you have a great idea – you need to market to a niche. Once you identify a hungry market – a market that is interested in what you offer – then use your marketing campaign to motivate them to buy. You have a targeted marketing effort which always gives better results.

You can read the whole article here:

By fiona, September 25th, 2009   |   in   Business Development,Marketing   |   2 comments

2 Comments so far

  1. Brian Hamlett September 25th, 2009 2:26 pm

    As a fellow marketing professional, I wholeheartedly agree! Now that I’m done sounding my own “marketing” horn, let me say why.

    I think we can all admit that the world has changed. Our past economical events has completely changed what consumers are interested in, what they are willing/want to buy, how they find what they want to buy, and how they want to be able to buy it. SO, if the consumer has changed, how can you assume that you will know how to develop a product first and then find the consumers of your product later? Wouldn’t it make more sense to learn who this new consumer is? What they actually need and the problems they face? THEN build a product to solve that need? It sure would save you some R&D dollars!

    The business of the new economic world will lead off with marketing and will make the marketing department the center of all product development efforts.

    Research the markets first, learn all about them, then build a product to solve an established need!

    Thanks for sharing this and you’re right on!

  2. fiona September 28th, 2009 2:22 pm

    Yes, I see that as the way things should work as well. Thanks for your comment.
    Fiona

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