How can your company get more for your marketing dollars? The answer is to market smarter—for three reasons.

1. Marketing communications exist in a competitive environment with tremendous clutter. To see the clutter, just look at the proliferation in advertising: on buses, movie screens, even shopping carts! It is a challenge to capture customers’ attention. For your message to be heard, you have to break through the clutter.

2. Consumer and business audiences have become fragmented. As marketing identifies a growing diversity of consumer needs, we move away from mass marketing to niche marketing. This trend will continue as new and improved technologies create more demand for niche-oriented products and services. Communications need to reflect this change, creating new ways to reach niche markets.

3. Marketing dollars are being held more accountable for sales results. In the past, companies allocated more money for image advertising. Today, companies are turning to marketing disciplines with measurable results, such as promotions and direct marketing.

How does a company spend its marketing dollars more wisely?

1. Narrow your focus. Define your customers as precisely as possible.

2. Select a message that is relevant and meaningful to your target audience. The greater insight you have into your customers, the more you can tailor your message to them.

3. Decide the best way to reach your customer. Consider the means that will be most powerful and cost effective to deliver your company’s message. Advertising? Public relations? Direct marketing? Sales promotion? Graphic design? What combination will yield the strongest sales return?

4. To achieve spectacular results, invest in creative thinking. One company sold its entire year’s inventory of a new product at one trade show, at a cost of less than $10,000 by cutting through the clutter, speaking directly to a specific market, and translating marketing dollars into sales. SME

Sally M. Tassani is president of Tassani Communications, Inc., a marketing agency in Chicago, IL. 312-644-2400.

ACTION: Market smarter by implementing these tips.