The emergence of digital media has made it possible to continually improve our perception into consumer behaviors and patterns. In the 90’s, this paved the way for the arrival of the newest member of the marketing family: micromarketing. This latest development has made it possible to fine-tune products and services as well as advertising to appeal to the personal wants and needs of the consumer.

The pyramid shown here illustrates how marketing is steadily becoming more and more focused on a specific target group, whereby results are more predictable and the returns increased. Micromarketing involves the initial identification of the niche market and subsequently uncovering the micro markets or “hotspots” within that niche. Mainly larger corporations and businesses use these techniques to record their impact and compare results within various mini markets. This allows them to steer their markets much more effectively.

Although micromarketing was until recently mostly associated with consumer targeted marketing (B2C), B2B marketers are now also taking notice as they discover the advantages. The vast amount of data being generated, especially through social media sites and advanced methods of analysis, facilitate the detection of mini markets to the extent of being able to single out sought after individuals within selected companies, their hobbies and preferences. Micro marketing is, in this sense, the most personal manner of identifying potential prospects and goes a step further than niche marketing which is limited to focusing on a specific group of prospects in the market.

It’s like taking a niche market and placing it under a magnifying glass
This enables anyone to spread relevant and specifically targeted information into a market which is
fairly saturated, and to stand out from the crowd in doing so. Due to this very personal approach, those providing specialist business services would benefit a great deal from this form of business to business marketing.

To what degree can micro marketing assist the business specialist in finding new clients?

In a blog posted 22-4-2012, “Increasing Cyclical Trends Force Consultants to Specialize” we presented our conclusions that specialization is a sound strategy in times of tough competition. The consultant seeks out an appropriate niche market in which his or her specialism stands out. He or she must also be prepared to adapt to any shifting circumstances in that market. (“specialize/adapt or die”)

Micro marketing techniques can provide valuable guidance where that is concerned. Once the “hotspots” within the niche market of the business specialist are identified from the available data and the competition has been evaluated, an effective marketing plan can be created and put into action.

Action plan

The business specialist is now presented with an enormous challenge. How can he or she attract the attention of potential clients within the target group using a justifiable amount of time, effort and resources?

  • The first logical step is to create a continuous stream of content on a website which is more than simply a digital business card – in other words – a TOFU (top of the funnel) website. By this is meant a website which directly addresses the client’s needs and offers a large portion of problem solving content. The content may be delivered in the form of blogs, E-Books, white papers, video’s and so forth. It is a demonstration of knowledge, experience and insight into what occurs within the target group. An added benefit is that this encourages and strengthens relationships with existing clients as well.
  • The next step involves distilling the potential clients from the general readers of the content. To this end, it’s extremely important to combine the subscription with drip marketing techniques, among other things. The interaction resulting from the stream of content via social media gives rise to the possibility of establishing lucrative contacts and to ultimately accumulate useful details and information from the visitors and tracking data.
  • With the contact information obtained via this lengthy process, the specialist is now in a position to take action by contacting the potential client immediately or by introducing an intermediate step employing the use of a direct marketing campaign. In either case, it is crucial to plan the moment of contact carefully by implementing the micro marketing analysis technique of closely observing the potential client and thereby learning as much as possible about them. As a result, specific needs can be taken into consideration and the specialist will be in an optimal state of preparedness to carry out a successful conversation.
  • Even traditional networks are strengthened when the consultant’s knowledge of his target group is demonstrated and authority in his sector is well established via content marketing. The success of this method depends however on the availability of sufficient volume of visitor traffic to the website. The established funnel must be constantly loaded with visitors in order to extract the truly significant contacts. This can only be done by providing relevant content on a consistent basis, implementing the right SEO technique, maximizing the use of social media and by providing backlinks to the website to lure in traffic.

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