Why Something For Everyone Can Be Ineffective Marketing And How To Fix It
“I want to appeal to everyone”- a very common statement for someone from someone who has the very best of intentions. Similar quotes you may have heard are “We don’t want to be pigeon-holed” or “All business is good business.” The problem is that it can lead to very ineffective marketing.
Why You Should Define Your Target Market And Ways To Appeal To Them
By defining your target market and figuring out who your ideal customer is you are able to save time, money, and effort in marketing your product/service. You are also able to develop a stronger message rather than just being generic. This helps to avoid ineffective marketing.
But Then I Won’t Reach Everyone, I’ll Only Reach A Select Few!
When you target a specific audience, there is always the chance that you may not reach another (or everyone). Speaking to an audience that is in too broad a market reach can result in you reaching no one at all because they can’t hear you. Ineffective Marketing is as bad as no marketing at times.
A GREAT article from Verticle Measures on improving your content marketing strategy.
Avoiding Ineffective Marketing- Finding Your Target Market
You can find your target market by breaking it down several different ways.
Demographic- Where are they from? How old are they?
Problem- What is the problem they are trying to find a solution for?
Solutions- More education? A great product?
How can you help solve their problem?- What can you offer to help them solve this problem?
What makes you different?
- Features and Benefits of your product/service.
Market Segmentation–
Breaking down a larger target market into smaller segments with specific groups. You may have first started with where they live, or an age range. Now, break it down further:
Attitudes, beliefs, emotions, lifestyle
ex: Southwest fun and innovative
Delta- reliable and safe
What is your audience’s attitude about the problem? Are they looking for an easy fix or something more DIY? Will their beliefs play a part in how the problem solved?
What emotions are related? Is it stressful, frustrating, happy, blah? It’s important to determine what emotions are related to the problem so that you approach it from a place that will connect most with your audience.
Understand Your Audience’s Problem
You have figure out and understand how they feel about it and what they are currently doing to try and solve it. User Persona’s while a pain to actually work out can be very helpful when you are trying to figure out how your audience feels about the problem. The user personas can be used more than once when creating content and thinking about how that “person” will see the situation
Details Are Important
Go into detail. Since you’ve figured out your audience and understand how they feel about the problem y are trying to solve make sure you are as detailed as you can be about the issue and how to fix it. What may seem obvious to you, isn’t necessarily to them.
Get Started
Avoiding Ineffective Marketing takes work, but doesn’t anything that is worthwhile? Include the steps we’ve talked about to increase your marketing success!
Need help finding your target markets or coming up with a strategy? Get some assistance!
Have you experienced any marketing stumbling blocks and overcome them? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
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