Different companies take on different strategies when striving for financial success. Some may try to stay within a particular niche and cater only to a specific segment of the populace. Others may try to expand their focus to capture as large of an audience as possible. This is the question of whether one should be a specialist or a generalist.

A similar concept can apply to the pricing scheme you have for your range of products and services. Are you only going to focus on people who want to spend a certain range of money or are you going to have possible offerings for people from all budgets? This can have a dramatic impact on how you choose to market your business.

If you are approaching only the high-end, as would be the case with a Ferrari dealership, it may not make a lot of sense to advertise affordable loan programs or the free umbrella that may come with the car. However, if you are selling a budget-minded vehicle, these kinds of perks may be more useful.

In like manner, do you want to spend your time attracting customers that may not be profitable enough to warrant the extra resources necessary? Aside from special retention plans, you’ll find that you cannot get a data plan on a smartphone in Canada for less than $25 a month. Adding in some minutes and other features, you can expect to pay upwards to $100 a month. Should Rogers, Telus, and Bell have cheaper smartphone plans with fewer features and less data, or is that not worth their time?

For marketing purposes, it seems that Rogers has addressed this issue by making Fido its budget brand, just as Telus has done with Koodo and Bell with Solo. Has this marketing approach been effective? What about the separation of Nissan and Infiniti? Smart and Mercedes? Ford and Lincoln?