Selective Marketing - Why Choose Wisely?

It makes no sense to compete in every segment of the market. Especially if the competition is strong and there is a risk that you will turn into small and be left with nothing. The answer to this situation is to be selective marketing.

What is selective marketing?
Selective marketing in practice
Selective on-line marketing
Selective marketing - threats and ethics
Selective marketing - how can we help?

What is selective marketing?

According to one of the definitions, selective marketing consists of: “influencing various operational marketing programs and launching programs for selected segments, which give the company a chance to achieve market success. “It is one of the four most popular strategic variants of the company's marketing operations. When Marek Rawski asked entrepreneurs in 2014 for the purposes of the work published in the Scientific Papers of the Silesian University of Technology which marketing strategy was used by them, 44 percent pointed to selective marketing, 25 percent. for diversified marketing, 16 percent for undifferentiated marketing, and 12 percent. - on personalized marketing.

Selective marketing is most often used in the market where:

there are several different customer groups,
large and medium-sized companies dominate,
the market is segmented.

In short, it is about differentiating the marketing mix in terms of different market areas. In each case, the price, product policy, and forms of distribution and promotion may be different.

Selective marketing in practice

This concept may apply to the entire corporate strategy or the communication itself or forms of advertising. Communication strategy based on selective marketing will focus on a few of the many marketing channels. For example, a new tea producer is unlikely to have a chance to enter the mass market today and displace dominant competitors. So it could focus on on-line distribution, as well as presence at culinary and breakfast fairs. In this way, it would be possible to control the segment of young customers, present on Instagram, interested in foreign cuisine and a healthy lifestyle.

Selective on-line marketing

Many people understand the rules governing selective marketing in the real world, but online reality is more difficult. How can you segment the market when the company has one website and the same, visible to all products? This was true until recently. Today, however, many tools have been developed that allow segmentation, and even market microsegmentation. These include:

Google Ads,
Facebook ads,
Instagram advertising,
landing page,
SEO marketing i positioning of pages.

Are you wondering how to segment the market?

We have the right tools for that!

In short, paid ads allow you to create many ads targeting different groups of recipients within one medium. For example, a rural resident will not see an advertisement directed at a person who uses his device in a city, so you can separate these two advertising messages. If customers can go to the website through Google ads or a browser, it is also possible to differentiate their experiences by creating a landing page, and even a separate sales funnel and customer path for each of these groups. This allows not only to implement selective on-line marketing, but also to very effectively monitor the activity in individual groups, customer lifetime value or dropout rate for each of the market segments. This, in turn, allows for even more precise definition and change of these groups based on real market data and changing purchasing decisions of customers.

Selective marketing - threats and ethics

In academia, it is sometimes said that selective marketing is unethical. Enterprises strive to select the market segment that will bring them the highest profit. It is not a problem for them to exclude other customers if they are not profitable. The use of selective marketing and price differentiation may lead to discrimination against some customers. It is worth remembering, for example, in the context of your company's PR strategy, because even discrimination against a small group of people can result in a hiccup in the world of quick judgments and reactions in social media.

The history of companies is an interesting example Abercombre & Fitch, and American Appareal. Both in the USA were synonymous with fashion for the young, shapely and beautiful. Even the store staff had to fit a certain beauty canon, and those who did not fit it were afraid to even enter these boutiques. In the 90s and 00s it fueled the imagination and built the company's reputation, which besides, she sold rather mediocre clothes. In the world where the banners are inclusiveness and justice, however, problems began. Also due to the growing popularity of the on-line sales channel, maintaining an exclusive, elite image turned out to be impossible. Both companies had to start closing their stores and changing their image. Their problems are only growing today. They ceased to distinguish themselves from the competition, and thus the only reason to choose this brand over others disappeared.

A somewhat similar case applies to clubs where guests were selected a dozen or so years ago. Today it is rather rare, and strict selection based on appearance, race or gender is no longer accepted. When designing your strategy based on selective marketing, it is worth implementing it in accordance with the mission and goals of the company. These, in turn, should be widely accepted by customers. Here, for the sake of contrast, one can give an example of expensive beauty salons. While they are really aimed at a narrow audience, in theory they are open to everyone, building a positive one corporate image and favorable social attitude. Everyone can follow them, for example, on Instagram and dream of using the services of the salon.