Tips for marketing smarter not harder

Marketing can be defined quite simply as the way that you get others to notice your product so that they will buy it and you will make money.But marketing in the most efficient way possible is not so simple.There are many marketing strategies that in essence take a series of "stabs in the dark" and hope that one of the methods that they use works well enough to be implemented on a larger scale.Now while in theory trial and error strategies may not be completely useless, there are many companies out there that simply do not have the financial resources or the time to miss the mark.Marketing strategies more often than not are best when they allow you to promote your product smarter rather than harder.

There are many effective marketing strategies out there.Many of these strategies reach a wide audience at very minimal cost to you.Some examples of just such strategies as well as other tips for how to market smarter, not harder, are listed below:

• Know your market - Every time you spend a marketing dollar on a customer who is not interested in your product, you loose money.Of course there is no perfect equation for finding only those who are guaranteed to buy your product but there are plenty of ways to narrow down your market to include just those who are most likely to give you a return on your marketing investment dollar by purchasing your product.Methods of research and study are needed to really pin point who it is that you should market to.Surveys, demographic information, lifestyle, etc. are all things that you need to understand about the market that you want to reach.Ideally, when you created the product that you are now looking to sell, you already had a good idea of the kind of market that would want this product, it was designed for them!You need to get into the heads of your customers.
• Next-to-nothing marketing - When marketing is free or close to free you can afford to make some mistakes, learn from them, and use those experiences as the foundation for more expensive marketing techniques.Many times a company gets its start because of smart marketing not because they have generous sponsors or a great deal of capital.An example of a marketing strategy that costs nothing but a few minutes of your time is a press release.Press releases are announcements that those reporting the news believe are news worthy.A new product that will make people's lives easier is certainly something that people will want to know about.A carefully worded news release about your company and product that is distributed to newspapers, magazines and newscasters has the potential of reaching hundreds of thousands of people.Even if only one news medium prints your news release, you will have reached at least a few thousand people without spending any money.
• The internet - Marketing on the internet is a given when it comes to marketing smarter and not harder.Having a presence online means that your company and product are now available to a worldwide market.All that it took on your part was a little computer know-how and maybe a small monthly fee.
• Piggybacking - Piggybacking is another smart way of marketing that can get you right where you want to be in terms of reaching your target market.Piggybacking is a marketing strategy where you as the marketer use the surroundings and habits of your target customer to your advantage in order to expose them to your product.For example, if your product were targeted at young college students, a piggybacking marketing strategy would be to donate or hand out things like ask trays, shirts, hats, etc. with your company's logo or a product plug at a location such as a party hot spot, bar or college common area.