do you understand your customers?

For any start-up without a large marketing budget it can be quite challenging to formulate a comprehensive promotional strategy. Endless meetings can result in a list of endless questions without answers, most of which are trying to solve the same questions:

What do our customers want? How can we sell more?

There are oodles of resources that provide answers but it’s easy to get confused and distracted by anything published on the subject of marketing. Start-ups often create marketing campaigns in response to company growth and purchasing trends; rarely can a small company afford consistent professional marketing expertise.

The Ad Contrarian is a blog written by Bob Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman/Lewis advertising and author of the book The Ad Contrarian. Every now and then Hoffman provides a gem for the ‘little guy’ and his post Stop Listening to Consumers is a great example. Here is how he sums up consumer behaviour:

• One third buy because it’s cheaper
• One third buy because they believe it tastes (works, looks, smells) better
• One third buy because they like the brand better

Thanks, Bob! Some great free advice for our very small budgets. Now that we understand how consumers behave, we can apply this easy filter to our marketing decisions.

PS: Check out The Ad Contrarian blog to get a free copy of his book. And with a start-up budget like ours, we like free.