Are you targeting a specific audience in your marketing campaigns?

An interesting postcard showed up in my mailbox this week from a gym in my area. The headline and photos on the postcard advertised the gym’s child care facility where members can drop off their kids while they workout. Sounds like a great amenity that many people would want to take advantage of! There is just one problem- I don’t have any children. This postcard has no relevance to me as the receiver, so my first instinct is to throw the postcard in the trash.

With the exception of the kid friendly focus, the gym actually had a really great marketing piece. The postcard had wonderful graphic design and was aesthetically pleasing, it had a unique offer to use a temporary pass to visit the gym with no membership obligation, and it had a call to action that I needed to call a toll-free number to obtain my complimentary visitors pass.

The problem with this mailer is that it did not reach its intended target audience of a gym seeker with children. After further examination, I also noticed that the postcard was addressed to “current resident” which tells me that this gym has no clue who I am and is probably mailing to every address in my area.

The underlying issue is that this gym did not do their research. Without good data, and a good list, your great offer/messaging/design will fall on deaf ears. Even a really bad marketing piece sent to the right target market can earn results, but a great marketing piece sent to the wrong target market will earn no results.

Identify Your Target Audience

Identifying your target market is easy. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Who buys from you?
• What do they buy?
• When do they buy?
• Where are they located?
• What are their buying habits?
• What are your customer demographics? Consider age, gender, lifestyle, family, residency, income level, etc.

Cookie Cutter Marketing Doesn’t Work

Don’t try to generalize you marketing to fit all of these demographics or assume that one type of marketing strategy will work for everyone (like the gym postcard). You need to market to all of these audiences differently as every audience has different needs and preferences.

Bianca Te Rito, contributing author for She Takes on the World, said it best when she blogged that, “It is a big mistake in online personal branding (or any branding for that matter) to try to be all things to all people.  If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one”.

I agree with Te Rito that we cannot try to approach all audiences in the same. My experience confirms that many people try to create cookie cutter marketing strategies that can apply to everyone, but this just simply will not work.

Instead of sending everyone in the area a postcard advertising their child care services, this gym could have greatly benefited from three distinct mini campaigns.

One could have targeted parents of young children with the messaging and imagery that was in the original postcard.

Another could target young adults with photos of young, good looking, fit individuals and the gym’s state of the art equipment.

Another could have targeted active seniors by showing images of the diverse ages present at the gym and perhaps advertise senior friendly group fitness classes.

Cost

The first reaction I get when I suggest three mini campaigns to my clients is that it must be more expensive to do three mini campaigns than one campaign, but this is not necessarily true. It costs just as much to mail 3,000 of the child care post cards as it would to mail 1,000 child care, 1,000 young adult, and 1,000 senior target postcards. If you have customer data on file, and you probably do, than you might not need to buy multiple mailing lists. If the only design variations in your postcards are images and a headlines then the graphic design charges for three postcards will not be that much more than the one.

Target audience and good data are key a successful marketing campaign. Don’t just spray and pray for success. Having a clear marketing strategy target towards a specific audience will increase response rates exponentially.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Are you measuring your response rates?

When I ask about response rates or conversion rates all too often my customers convey that they have no idea what types of responses they are getting to their marketing. This is counterproductive to their marketing efforts.

If you don’t know the response rates to a marketing piece, you don’t know whether or not it is effective. If you don’t know whether or not it is effective, then you don’t know if it is a worthy return on your investment. If you don’t know if it is a good return on your investment, then you are just blindly pumping money into your marketing.—does any of this make sense?

Response mechanisms can come in many forms that can apply to different marketing pieces and different budgets.  Personalized URLs, generic URLs, landing pages, and online surveys can all be used to capture who is responding to your call-to-action (register to win an iPod touch before September 1st at www.XyZ.com).

These online response mechanisms are very effective, very impressive, and generate more response rates but they are not fitting for every project or budget. Some response mechanisms can include a toll free number, calling a specific salesperson, or sending an email to a specific address, all of which can be measured.

Another alternative is to use your marketing piece as your response mechanism. Perhaps your campaign includes a coupon/voucher with a serial number that must be redeemed for the incentive. At the end of the promotion you can calculate how many vouchers were redeemed and determine who responded by the serial number.

Sometimes a response mechanism will generate no response. Although unfortunate, this is still very useful feedback. It may be time to rethink the before mentioned elements of your marketing piece and uncover why it isn’t effective. Remember, no feedback is good feedback!

Analyzing your marketing performance is key to successful marketing efforts. This is the most important step of the entire marketing process. It will help drive better results and your marketing performance depends on it!

Get your customer's attention and give them an incentive to act now!

Your marketing piece should have a clear call-to-action that expresses to the customer exactly how you want them to respond. To implement a call-to-action, simply ask yourself how you want the recipient to react to the piece and include it in the creative and messaging.
A call-to-action can take on many forms. It could be to respond to a personalized URL or generic URL, go to a website, call a phone number, contact a representative, attend a trade show, or go to a retail location. Ask the recipient to act now! Include this call-to-action in an obvious and noticeable location in your creative. Perhaps bold letters, in the headline, or in a star burst.

The call-to-action seems to go hand in hand with an incentive. Infomercials utilize this tactic regularly to get buyers to have a sense of purchasing urgency. Call in the next twenty minutes and receive an additional ______ free! Incentives give the receiver reason to act on your call-to-action. It can be in the form of a giveaway, a discount, a contest, or a free gift with purchase.

Again, you must think like your consumer. Is a free $5.00 Starbucks gift card enticing enough or would they prefer to be entered in a drawing to win a new iPod Touch? Some offers can be pertinent to your business or others can be fun items that you think your customers will appreciate.

In any case, a call-to-action linked to an attractive incentive will give receivers all the more reason to react to your marketing piece.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Frustrated by your marketing?

I can’t generate new leads! My customers have left me for my competitor! They are not buying enough! I can’t seem to gain market share! They are not responding to my mailers! That postcard is too expensive! –My marketing isn’t working!

Everywhere I turn these days it seems that everyone is questioning their marketing. Although there is no sure fire formula that will bring success, there are ways to improve your marketing, enhance your response rates, and see a better return on your investment.

The next few blogs are intended to analyze your marketing efforts and will be presented in six short segments where we will discuss:
•    Message and Copy
•    Frequency and Timing
•    Creative and Branding
•    Call-to-Action and Incentive
•    Target Audience and Data
•    Response Mechanisms

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com