After the marketer has segmented a large and broad market, he will now need to analyze every targeted market segment so that he will be able to satisfy the need of that target market. The results the marketer get from analyzing the market segments will enable him consider which marketing strategy to use. The following are different target market strategies that can be employed.
– Single-segment strategy: This refers to concentrating on a single market section and providing product and service only for that single target market segment. It is also known as concentrated strategy. Often times, this is the type of plan a small or newly emergent firm used to employ as they have limited resources to cater for a whole market.
– Differentiated strategy: This is also referred to multi-segment or selective specialization plan. In this way, more than one target market is offered the product and service. The product may be the same or it might be different. But the branding, advertising campaign and even promotional message will be different for each target customer group. For example, a Company like Toyota that sells different models of Camry to different set of customers. The designs are different, but the spare parts are all the same.
– Undifferentiated Marketing strategy: This plan entails providing the whole broad market with a single product or service. The marketer will attempt to appeal to the whole Total Available Market with just one single product or he might provide mass marketing mixes to a single market division. The only advantage of this type of strategy is that it lowers the cost of production and development of the product. This approach was used in the olden days where people do not have much choice of selecting. Nowadays, the strategy seems to be rather unreasonable.
– There is also customized or micro-marketing strategies whereby the marketer focuses a particular product to different market groups or serving a particular group and offers that group an array of different products. The first type of plan is called product specialization strategy while the later is market specialization. This plan requires marketer to have advanced and extensive technical capabilities to reach his targeted customers. The Internet is notable for providing enhancement for this target marketing strategy. Many marketers now learn to utilize the Internet micro-marketing scheme to promote their products.
