Strategies for Reaching Target Markets
Marketers have outlined four basic strategies to satisfy target markets: undifferentiated marketing or mass marketing, differentiated marketing, concentrated marketing, and micromarketing/ nichemarketing.
Mass marketing is a market coverage strategy in which a firm decides to ignore market segment differences and go after the whole market with one offer. It is the type of marketing (or attempting to sell through persuasion) of a product to a wide audience. The idea is to broadcast a message that will reach the largest number of people possible. Traditionally mass marketing has focused on radio, television and newspapers as the medium used to reach this broad audience.
A differentiated marketing strategy is one where the company decides to provide separate offerings to each different market segment that it targets. It is also called multisegment marketing and as is clearly seen that it tries to appeal to multiple segments in the market. Each segment is targeted uniquely as the company provides unique benefits to different segments. It increases the total sales but at the expense of increase in the cost of investing in the business.
Concentrated marketing is a strategy which targets very defined and specific segments of the consumer population. It is particularly effective for small companies with limited resources as it does not believe in the use of mass production, mass distribution and mass advertising. There is no increase in the total Profits of the sales as it targets just one segment of the market.
For sales teams, one way to reach out to target markets is through direct marketing. This is done by buying consumer database based on the segmentation profiles you have defined. These database usually comes with consumer contacts (e.g. email, mobile no., home no., etc.). Caution is recommended when undertaking direct marketing efforts — check the targeted country's direct marketing laws.