When I was out and about yesterday, I noticed a postal for the internet calling site Skype.
Amazon ads are always on the underground and on billboards all over the UK and Amazon also send direct mails.
Even Google the prosecutor, judge and jury of the internet sends out postal direct mail with discount coupons.
eBay also advertise on billboards around the UK. Those guys are the powerhouse of the internet yet they are engaged in offline line marketing activities.
Just think of the irony of Google using offline medium to persuade you to advertise your business online.
Doesn't that tell you something?
So what is it that Google, Amazon, eBay or Skype know that many retailers do not know?
What they know is this, the fundamentals of marketing never change because human behaviour is the only constant.
The tools of marketing will continue to evolve, but the fundamentals will remain constant.
If there is only one lesson you will learn from this report, let it be this: human behaviour is the only constant.
Human behaviour has never changed since the days of Caesar.
It has remained the same since the beginning of time and it will remain the same till the end of time.
So if you like to increase your sales, instead of focusing your strategies on tools, you need to focus on mastering the fundamentals of marketing, one of which is understanding your customers.
When most retailers think about increasing sales, they focus on the how to sell instead of first asking the question who are we going to sell to.
There is a reason why when Sir Terry took over Tesco he started from that question
because he realised that you cannot sell to people if you do not know what they
want.
So the first step in the process of increasing your store sales is understanding who you are going to sell to.
There are lots of different ways of segmenting your target market.
Here are just two of the most common target market segments process: