To know your target market is probably one of the best starting points when trying to acquire new business.
Firstly, profile your existing customers on their size, location and most importantly the sector (by SIC).
Analyse your findings to see what coloration there is and what are the top 3 sectors you market to.
Then analyse the market size through an organisation such as Credit safe, which will give you the total number of businesses within a particular SIC. It is prudent to be quite specific; for example if you pick construction, there are 353,239 companies within the sector.
Then select the realistic geographical area that you are happy to offer your services to.
The company size is probably the least significant point but should be kept within the data, in order to serve ‘prime promotions’, i.e. highly targeted campaigns to your ‘ideal’ customer or more concentrated campaigns.
Once you have your three target market sectors, you should calculate how many new customers you need to meet you target and forecast?
As an accounting practise we would suggest your target market size should be a multiple of 250 per new customer. That is to say if your target is 10 new customers, the suggested initial quantity to market should be 2500. Dependant on your practise size this should be a good starting point.
The overall segment should be kept in background, as for some marketing channels it is fairly cost effective to hit large numbers of companies. Equally many of these channels may not have the same penetration e.g. a general e-mail blast will not have the same penetration as receiving a personalised calculator in the post.
That then leads on to the cost of customer acquisition and where to target your marketing, but that’s for another blog. Back to the target market, once collated, the records will need profiling by detailed SIC / business description and by size. This will enable you to target the sector with engaging, relevant content in line with GDPR as your target market could have a legitimate interest in your product or service.
To conclude, as an accounting practise, you may already subscribe to a credit reference agency database and this is an easy market research exercise that can be done ‘in-house’. If not, you could use a company such as Credit Safe (02920 886 500) or a marketing company such as Herald Chase (0118 9474888) who will compile the report for a £100.00 one off fee (this excludes the purchase of data).
Also, just to remind you we work closely with many accounting practices and offer:
• 30% of our fees for finance introductions*
• 10% of our fees for Business sale introductions*
*This may be taken in monetary form or as marketing services and data to the equivalent value.
If you are interested in finding out more about our collaborative marketing services, email us at: info@thebusinessboard.co.uk or call our office on 0118 338 1818.
We look forward to speaking with you.
[/cs_text][/cs_column][/cs_row][/cs_section][/cs_content]
