What is street level marketing?
Street level marketing (SLM) can be defined as:
The marketing activities undertaken by a member of a psychographic or lifestyle niche to further the adoption of an idea, innovation, goods or service, that is developed within the niche, to meet the specific needs or wants of the niche.
SLM represents an alternative movement in the application of marketing models. SLM operates from a different perspective to ‘textbook’ marketing in that it takes a bottom-up marketing focus— the marketing is driven by membership rather than observation of a target market. It focuses on intra-niche marketing. The objective of the entrepreneur or innovator is to meet the particular needs and wants of the group of which they are a member.
In contrast, contemporary marketing theory tends to focus on top-down implementation of marketing strategies—it is aided and guided by intrusive observational market research, capturing a single snapshot of a marketing environment and using that as the basis of a long-term marketing strategy. Understanding the true needs of the target market is inevitably limited by the sophistication and measurement effectiveness of the tools used. Further, attempts to identify niches and needs from an outsider perspective often result in failures due to a misunderstanding of who is actually a member of the target market. Despite the many advances in segmentation theory, the reality is that most traditional marketers still focus on demographics (for cost, measurement and convenience reasons) to define their target markets.
For example, it is often easier for a surfer who understands business to develop innovative surfing products, than for a business person trying to understand what new products surfers might respond to on the basis of traditional market research.
SLM relates to the marketing of niche-specific innovations that are developed by members of that niche to fill a need in their own market. Roughly translated, SLM is designed to assist entrepreneurial innovators who develop products to meet their own needs and those of their peers. Unlike the top-down intrusiveness of classic marketing techniques, SLM focuses on developing marketing strategies based on market immersion and self- observation. This gives the SLM marketer the opportunity to use a wide ranging tool-kit including ethnography, market orientation and their natural competitive advantage of street level credibility.
This is not to say that SLM is foolproof—the nature of the market immersion offered by SLM has its advantages, but does not replace the need for good business practices. Street credibility and innate market knowledge will not stop a poorly run business from failing any more than relationship marketing, guerilla marketing or the 4Ps (product, price, promotion and place) could have saved it.
Importantly, SLM is not simply ‘gut-feel’ marketing. It is the application of a coordinated and integrated approach to marketing strategy from a bottom-up and industry experience perspective.
Traditional market segmentation is based on hard data gained from often intrusive observational and measurement processes, or programs based on adjustments to products and promotional messages to identify with the market. By contrast, SLM strategies are developed from within the market. This is the fundamental point of differentiation between SLM and other marketing strategies—SLM marketers and SLM campaigns exist within the niche and are not imposed upon the niche by ‘outsiders’.
SLM’s intra-niche focus gives it an exclusivity of domain not found in other marketing techniques. This is because the SLM marketer is a member of their own target market and therefore more fully understands the needs of that market. In addition, intra- niche product development offers greater opportunity for marketer and consumers to share a common understanding, and co-develop a product that offers a valued solution to the market need.
Numerous inventions and innovations have arisen from members of a market figuring out solutions to their own problems and implementing them faster than a market research driven company could discover the problem and develop a solution. Most true innovations would never have emerged as a result of classic market research techniques. Breakthroughs often only occur after a specific incident in the innovator or entrepreneur’s life that highlights the need for a new way of doing things
