Entrepreneurship, Second Edition

5.4. Marketing Strategy for Entrepreneurs

A company's marketing strategy must closely align with its resources and capabilities. Entrepreneurial companies with limited resources have little room for strategic mistakes. Segmentation, targeting, and positioning are key marketing dimensions that set the strategic framework. We begin this section by discussing these three activities and their role in marketing strategy. Then we examine the widely studied marketing elements known as the marketing mix: product, price, distribution (place), and communications (promotion).

5.4.1. Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning

Segmentation and targeting are the processes marketers use to identify the "right" customers for their company's products and services. In Chapter 3, we talked about the segment your opportunity would initially target, what we call the primary target audience or PTA. As we move beyond opportunity recognition into implementation of a marketing strategy, we need to revisit our initial conceptions and refine what that PTA segment really means. A segment is a group of customers defined by certain common bases or characteristics that may be demographic, psychographic (commonly called lifestyle characteristics), or behavioral. Demographic characteristics include age, education, gender, and income; lifestyle characteristics include descriptors like active, individualistic, risk taking, and time pressured. Behavioral characteristics include consumer traits such as brand loyalty ...