Micro-markets

News: September 2012

Micro-markets

Thanks to the adoption of CRM systems in modern businesses, firms now have the opportunity to manipulate vast databases in order to develop highly targeted campaigns in order to win new sales opportunities. Micro-marketing is all about specific targeting, segmenting target groups into sub-categories and producing unique sales messages for each individual target group.

For a micro-marketing strategy to work, however, management must have the courage and imagination to act on the insights revealed by this type of analysis. Most sales leaders deploy resources on the basis of the current or historical performance of a given sales region. Going after future opportunities at the micro-level can seem risky, but basing strategy on old views of markets and their past performance is riskier still.

The sales team needs to understand the rationale behind the micromarketing strategy and be provided with the tools in order to implement the strategy. The tools might be template letters, sales brochures, etc. Communication from management is also key.

Resources should be aligned with opportunity. If a specific market segment has high income potential combined with little or no competitors operating in that sector, additional resources should be allocated to targeting that sector as the chances of success are higher.

For your micro-marketing strategy to succeed, you need to support your team. Your sales team should engage with opportunity maps that reveal hot (and cool) micro markets in a given geography and test their intuition against hard data. Training should also allow them to act out and hone appropriate sales approaches. Not only does this hands-on engagement help win buy-in from your sales team, it is also a much more effective teaching method than lectures or demonstrations.