Marketing is a complicated dance between consumer and company, but too often the dance partners simply can’t get the steps right.
When businesses fail to tailor their messages to their markets, they’re not only doing themselves a huge disservice, they’re doing one to that potential market, too. After all, sometimes people need a giant sign pointing at them to make them realize they are, in fact, the ones a marketing piece is talking about.
For example, if you wanted to sell rubber emergency rafts to boaters, you wouldn’t simply waggle a raft around hoping for a sale — you’d make sure boaters saw what you had to offer and knew it was for them. Even though this seems like the most logical thing in the world, marketing is often far too subtle for fear of alienating people who aren’t part of the target audience to begin with.
Banish those thoughts and focus only on the people whose attention you want with these three ways to better tailor your messages:
Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. There comes a time in your business or product’s life when you will have to determine just who can use it and what it’ll do for them. Sometimes your product will work great for several different groups, but focus on the most obvious first and work your way down. If you can imagine what it’s like to be that ideal customer, then you can really tune into what concerns and needs they have for a product like yours – and how best to show them it can make their current problems disappear.
Use images that appeal to your market. Every market has certain images that it will immediately key into. For example, parents will notice products for babies more often if there’s a baby involved in the marketing. By giving visual clues along with your marketing materials, you’ll be able to forge a better connection with audiences you’re targeting and create a stronger mental connection for them. You want your audience to think about you every time they think about babies (or other images), that’s the key.
Try market segmentation surveys. If you’re already working with an established customer base and are trying to figure out how to market to them better, a market segmentation survey can help a great deal. These surveys can help you determine exactly who your audience is, where they live, who they live with, what motivates them and any other details you think will be helpful for future marketing. Keep surveys as short as possible without leaving out anything useful.
Tailoring your marketing for a single demographic or niche market can be a terrifying idea, but in reality you’ll be saving a ton of money not advertising to people who were never interested to begin with. As you more efficiently target customers who want your products, you’ll find your order fulfillment increasing dramatically.
