Five Ways to Ensure Your Marketing is Speaking to the Proper Audience.

The key to a successful marking campaign is to ensure you are speaking to your customers. Here’s what happens a lot of the time, “I don’t like (insert media outlet here.)” So, what happens, they buy advertising on the mediums they like and most of the time miss speaking to their customers. Here are a few tips to ensure you can take your personal feelings out of your strategy.

1.     Think about your customers

What are they watching, listening to reading, seeing drinking, etc? It’s easy to focus your attention on your likes since it’s your money. But if you’re not placing your message where your customer is, your throwing money away.

2.     Talk to your customers

Ask them what they watch, listen to, read etc. It will give you a good idea of where you need to be so you can attract new customers. The idea that everyone knows who you are and where you are is a false sense of security. It masks the fact that you don’t know where your customers are. People move in all the time and they don’t know you. The person who did know you will eventually die and take their secrets with them. Speak to your customers. They will appreciate you building the relationship.

If someone told you about a special deal where you could have a print ad in a local paper given only to college students and you sell luxury cars, would you buy it?

3.     Work with a marketing consultant from a local media outlet

This can be a double-edged sword because I promise you, they will tell you your audience is all over their medium. What you want here is research showing you where your customers are sending their time. They have access to an abundance of unbiased resources, one being AdMall. Ask them for an AdMall analysis.

4.     Avoid the ad agency

While I hate to put a negative spin on this, the ad agency will place your ad on the medium that costs the least, then tell you how great a job they did by placing your ad in front of X-number of people. Cost doesn’t matter, more on that in a second, speaking to your audience does.

5.     Forget about the price

If someone told you about a special deal where you could have a print ad in a local paper given only to college students and you sell luxury cars, would you buy it? No. It’s not your customer. You’d be better off on The Masters or NFL Football. I hear this all the time. “I’m not going to buy that. It’s too expensive.” However, if the ads speak directly to your customer and you have an increased chance of making a sale, the ads are no longer an expense, they are an investment. If your customers are watching NFL Football, then plan to place your message in the game. If they are listening to the radio, then expect to be on local radio as well as internet radio.

There are more options than ever when it comes to media channels. However, considering your customer, and not your taste, will pare down the field of possibilities and put you in a position to win. Then you’ll be a sharp-shooter, explicitly targeting your customer where they are, seamlessly integrating your message into their lifestyle.