Top 10 tips for Marketing Compost
- Do your research. The market for compost is in its comparative infancy. Conduct your own research, however informally, to learn more about existing markets and conditions.
- Know what matters to your target market. Marketing is fulfilling a need, so you need to find out what that need is. Don't look at this push for business from your point of view. Sit down and examine the issues facing your potential client. What matters to them? What problem are you solving?
- Get certified! BSI PAS 100 is the quality standard for compost. Your customers will be looking for this mark of quality. So if you don't yet have it, imagine how this will make you look in front of a prospective customer.
- Define a marketing budget. Find out what marketing materials and/or advice you need and how much it is going to cost. Marketing is not gloss, it is the way you will win business, so you need to determine how much you're prepared to spend on it.
- Get familiar with your prospective customer. The more you understand about the person you're selling to, the more likely you are to succeed. You need to know them by name. You need to know their age. If possible, you need to know the kind of things they're interested in outside work. It all helps to build an intelligent approach and will be far more effective than cold calling.
- Identify the barriers to adoption. What are your prospects buying at the moment? How much volume, at what price and who from? Find out exactly what they are currently happy with and unhappy with so that you can identify the barriers you need to overcome for them to switch to being your customer.
- Focus on the benefits. There really is a strong case if you consider the environmental and performance benefits of marketing compost. So it is important to educate the target audience and focus on these benefits in order to change any possible negative perceptions.
- Understand the supply chain. Understand your customer's customer. If you can identify where you sit in the supply chain and how your customer is using your product, you have a much better chance of meeting their buying criteria.
- Target your communications. The entire market will consist of only a few thousand potential customers, which can be segmented into different customer types. So it is more effective to target prospects via direct activity or through the relevant trade publications.
- Make sure you can meet demand. Do your sums. If your marketing goes well, will you be able to cope? Or are you simply investing in your client's disappointment. The rule is, under-promise and exceed expectations. Make a realistic appraisal of what you can deliver and make sure you can live up to it.
