What is Rural Marketing?
Author: Jim Hardcastle
Jim helps people plan and deliver effective communications. His background in the countryside sector provide him with a wealth of experience in rural marketing. Facilitation, fueled by coffee, with Post-Its at the ready, he’s here to help .
What is Rural Marketing and should it be approached differently from other types of marketing? This is my working definition, a definition that will evolve as I engage with others on the subject.
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers with the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.
Rural areas of the country are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture. Defra have a working definition, The Rural/Urban Definition, that was introduced in 2004 as a joint project between a number of Government Departments and was delivered by the Rural Evidence Research Centre at Birkbeck College (RERC).
Rural Marketing is defined as any marketing activity in which one dominant participant is from a rural area. This implies that rural marketing consists of marketing of inputs (products or services) to the rural as well as marketing of outputs from the rural markets to other geographical areas.
Marketing strategies that worked for urban markets do not necessarily work for the rural ones. I believe there are 7 differences:
1. Intra community influences are relatively more important than inter-community ones. Word-of-mouth in close knit communities is more powerful.
2. Scarcity of media bandwidth. Rural individual's access to media channels is limited and in the case of broadband the comparable upload and download speed may be slower. Online shopping is seen as a solution by many but will be dependent on broadband speed.
3. Slow to adopt brands. Slow to give them up. Rural consumers will be slower to pick up trends or brands but will remain loyal when accepted.
4. Expenses are year long but income is seasonal. Many rural areas rely on seasonal tourism peaks when income will be high and to a lesser extent agricultural incomes from seasonal crops. This means there will be more disposable income at certain times with rural businesses and employees.
5. Information hungry, but entertainment starved. Isolation from entertainment centres leads to a greater reliance from entertainment via the web.
6. Higher receptivity to experience advertising. Retail outlets in rural areas have many demonstration areas along with markets for tasting etc.
7. Commercially profitable and socially acceptable. Brands with demonstrable local, rural, environmental and/or social credibility stand a better chance.
Have I missed anything?
Tags: broadband (3), communication (27), defra (3), marketing (66), research (1), rural (35), strategy (27)
Next Blog Article |
View All | Previous Blog Article |
|
Recent Blog Articles
-
Online Influence on International Destination Marketing -
Are Laggards Holding You Back? -
Increasing Brand Awareness - what a cop out
Latest News
Latest from Twitter
Marketing Franchise in Wales… discovery day on 29 June… book here http://t.co/Yy056yn4
The retina display technology is also expected to be improved slightly, but it is not known whether the resolution will be improved as a result of it. The major feature that has been confirmed so far in the iPhone 5 has to be the NFC support. It will be something that is going to be changing the industry in the same way that the touchscreen mobile phones brought about a change.iPhone