Marketing Home Products

The marketing and communications world has changed more in the past five years than it has in the last 20. Due to technology and the explosive popularity of social media, today’s home product marketers and public relations practitioners must walk a fine line between new and traditional mediums when communicating with their target audiences. As such, social media marketing tends to fall under the umbrella of public relations, vastly changing the role of modern-day PR professionals.

Despite the challenges of creating a balance between shifting job responsibilities and time spent on social media versus traditional communications, PR professionals actually have the upper hand in the new wave of communications. As more and more customers flock to social media for news, interaction, sharing, dialogue and engagement, PR professionals have enhanced opportunities to connect with the audiences they have spent their entire careers trying to reach. How exciting!

And as skilled, professional communicators, public relations practitioners are the most qualified group of individuals to handle social media marketing for your businesses. They are strategic, well versed in your company’s key messages, and trained to deal with a variety of internal and external audiences including the media and your important customer audiences. They operate within a strict code of ethics and understand the importance of the distribution of immediate and relevant information to a variety of target audiences – all within a tight time frame.

If you’re in public relations, embrace the change. Remember that social media puts the focus back where it should be – on the public. And if you are a home products business owner or executive, remember to leave social media up to the experts, not the interns!

How Marketing Home Products Benefits from Integrated Efforts

Is it PR, or is it advertising? Or marketing? Or communications?

At Kleber & Associates, we combine these efforts into what’s called Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). When marketing home products, one must be cohesive and thorough.

Because the landscape of communication has changed (think texting, Twitter and iPhones), so has the way we do business.

Integrated Marketing Communications doesn’t have a universal definition, but its overall gist is a holistic approach to marketing in which all aspects of communication come together to form cohesive and unified messages. IMC is designed to align stakeholders in such a way that they feel everything is connected…from PR to advertising to promotion and direct marketing.

Consider our “Four P’s of Integrated Marketing Communication”:

• Plan: Like any strategy, you and your team should designate specific goals and tactics as you prepare to integrate your marketing efforts.
• Participate: Try to strip away titles like “PR-like object” or “creative execution.” All members of your team should be focused on one thing: what’s best for the audience. Therefore, you should all be thinking of ways to effectively overlay all promotions, advertising, PR and marketing.
• Pass On: Keep everyone informed. All the time. Share information in a way that keeps all of the team in the loop.
• Promote: Sell back the results of integration by promoting the metrics of its success.

When planned and executed well, IMC fosters cooperation, lower costs, better internal communication, personal growth and innovation. As your team collaborates to blend traditional PR efforts with traditional advertising and social media, your team has the chance to learn more, sharpen their skills and think more strategically. Not to mention the time and money saved when it comes to printing duplicates and e-mail threads!

Stakeholders appreciate it, too. Imagine receiving a clear set of messages with one voice that encompasses your entire campaign.

MMC Learning puts it nicely:

“IMC wraps communications around customers and helps them move through the various stages of the buying process. The organization simultaneously consolidates its image, develops a dialogue and nurtures its relationship with customers.”

In the end, it’s really all about togetherness. And doesn’t that sound nice?

Strategies to Appeal to Current and Prospective Customers

A solid customer base is the backbone of any thriving business. It’s essential that companies effectively tap into their pool of dedicated customers and identify prospective customers’ motivations and purchasing habits to successfully achieve market share growth.

Below are strategies to market home products by reaching your niche audiences, while increasing sales and market share.

Leverage Current Customers to Propel Sales
You’ve already established a strong customer base. They’ve bought from you in the past or are current customers sustaining your sales. Now, what are you going to do to maintain them as current and future customers?

• Instead of sending information out to customers, create a distribution channel where your customers can access your company information when and how they want.
• Offer customer referral promotions and incentives. You can develop a club for high-value customers where they can access discounts on your products or services or retrieve monetary rewards for new customer referrals.
• Provide ways for customers to comment about your company’s products and/or services. Research from MarketingSherpa found that 58 percent of consumers prefer Web sites with peer-written product reviews.
• Create a Facebook business page or Facebook group where customers can interact online.

Giving your customers a voice allows them the opportunity to become influential brand evangelists.

Be at the Forefront of Emerging Demographics
Aside from your existing customer base, it’s important to be knowledgeable about emerging, lucrative demographic groups as they have the potential to alter your business.

Take for example the newest generation to influence the home and commercial building products industry—the tech-savvy Millennials or Generation Y. This group is quickly becoming of first-time homebuyer age, and for those of us in the home and building industry, this is the group to watch closely.

The immigrant population is another vast and influential demographic group that needs to be watched closely by our industry. According to an analysis of census figures released in 2008, racial and ethnic minorities account for 43 percent of Americans under the age of 20, a strong indicator of America’s changing makeup.

Think Strategically, Target Accordingly
Whether you’re marketing to your existing customer base or potential customers, you need to know your target audiences. Ask yourself:

• What is this group like? What defines them?
• What are their likes/dislikes?
• What are their motivating factors to buy?
• How do they buy?
• How do they want to be reached?
• How can my brand target and attract them to increase sales and market share?

The key to marketing home products successfully—whether operating in an economic downturn or not—is reaching out to your customers the way they want to be targeted and in the places they are comfortable.