Last week, the Ideon Marketing and Sales network had a great guest speaker, Sean Duffy from the Duffy Agency. The topic, how market research can help you identify your customer or target audience. Sean Duffy has extensive experience in this area, which spans industries such as food, education, automotive, fashion, pharma/life sciences and consumer goods. Did you miss it? Not to worry, here is a summary of some of the best tips from Sean!
Sean started of the seminar by asking all the participants to write a message to their customers mirrored on some clear plastic, to remind them how important it is to always take the customer’s perspective.
Always, always have a buyer perspective when you are crafting your message. What is their background, their cultural references? Sean Duffy
Sean Duffy, Duffy Agency
The best takeaway from the seminar are these guidelines to apply to your business when it comes to planning your marketing message:
- Don’t expect to change people, listen to them, then adapt all 4 Ps to the market.
(The four Ps of marketing are; product, price, promotion and place.) - Markets do not respond to quality, only value. Listen to what your customers are asking for.
- Don’t export your domestic strategy. You can have a global value proposition, but the values must be local.
- Don’t confuse data with understanding. The market has all the answers you need, if you only know how to ask them.
- Don’t assume your norms are the standard everywhere. Understand the culture, test to be sure.
There was a question from the audience on where to start if you are a startup? You can not always travel to new markets to do research or afford to hire third party research, so what do you do?
“Strategic business planning needs to come before strategic marketing and brand development at this point. At this stage, you can try out different sales approaches. A trade fair is a great way to do market research”, said Sean. “Keep an open mind and be flexible, because your market value proposition will mostly change along the way”.
Join us for the next Ideon Marketing and Sales Network meeting
Do you want to learn more about marketing and sales and how you can do more for your business? Join our network! It is open for all Ideon companies and we meet once a month to get inspired, learn from each other and try our new ideas. The next meeting is on January 18, welcome!
