Insights on Marketing: Play to Your Audience

This month's topic:
Targeted Messages

“Target your message to your market.” Obvious advice? Of course. But it’s remarkable how often business communicators miss the mark – and this year’s SuperBowl halftime show stands out as one of the more egregious examples. A few reasons why communicators goof:

	They don't make the effort to understand the target market. If you're targeting CEO's, speak their language, understand their short attention span, appeal to big-picture concerns. If you're targeting engineers, make your case with proof. Think like a prospective buyer, put yourself in the prospect's shoes, pretend you're a customer for a day. If imagination fails, conduct a survey.
	They try to be all things to all people. This never works. The MTV teen is not the dad watching football with his nine-year-old. A message tailored for one audience may be offensive, boring, patronizing or incomprehensible to another. Choose a target and stick with it.
	They get caught up in what they want the audience to hear – not what the audience is receptive to hearing. Avoid this trap by figuring out what problem your product or service is trying to solve. Forget about all the cool things the product or service does. How will it meet a buyer’s needs? What problem does it solve? What will truly motivate the purchase?
	They choose multi-purpose programs to save money. This all-too-common justification only serves to dilute the message – and runs that same risk of turning off the audience. One Marketalk client has decided to broaden its market for nutritional supplements from male body-builders to health-conscious females. This new audience requires all-new ads, all-new media buys, and an all-new Web site – because the client understands that the ladies simply won’t respond to the guy talk prevalent in the original campaign.

Finally: always communicate professionally. We live in sophisticated times. Prospective buyers judge a company by its marketing communications and make decisions accordingly. With a weak or unfocused effort, you’re spending money to make a bad impression.

What do you think? Email Robin Lawson, rlawson@marketalk.com.

Think Again is a monthly e-column intended to inspire a fresh look at marketing-related business issues. Marketing is what the enterprise does to motivate buyers – not just what the enterprise says. Think Again is published by Marketalk, a marketing advisory firm in Newburyport, Mass. that helps business clients achieve the highest return on their marketing investment. For more information, please visit http://www.marketalk.com/.

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