Few products and services are so specialized that they have only one target audience.
Yet many brands -- in an attempt to stretch budgets -- use one general message which reaches too broad of an audience. This creates a diluted message that delivers lower ROI than if it was targeting the single best customer.
You aren’t alone. We have an innate desire to be liked by everyone personally and that also extends to businesses. One of my consultations with a podiatrist that has special treatment for heal pain was adamant that his demographic was teens to seniors, everyone that walked and ran. I repeated the question in different ways over the next 15 minutes until he finally admitted that the bulk of the patients he was treating were 50+ in age. Though there are other demographics that could benefit they were not the ones currently being treated. A secondary audience that would need a different marketing approach would be young athletes with injuries.
This is why defining the primary audience, the statistics of a very defined segment is needed. Marketing to a 50 year old and their triggers is different that targeting a mom with a child that has a sports injury.
This data I call the Consumer Pivot™. Defining your audience segments: primary, secondary and fringe. By documenting differences and similarities you develop the outline of messaging, location, and pain points to use in marketing, this includes copy on product packaging, ads, POP and your website.
By documenting differences and similarities you develop the outline of messaging, location, and pain points…
Write a highly focused description of each consumer segment: primary, secondary and fringe audience. It can take multiple drafts.
Think of the commonalities of the different audiences: age, profession, education, reason they need your product or service.
One insurance company had identified their target as 62+ years old and used music they related to. Wanting to get better results, they hired a consultant. Instead of creating a new campaign he first researched their brand and discovered their biggest customer segment was 55 year olds. Just changing the music to a style the 55 year olds listened to in high school increased response significantly. And the increased revenue more than paid for the consultant.
Access this information from your customer accounts and prospect files to write your different customer profiles.
And there's a great deal of information available from industry reports and trade articles about consumers and competitors.
Knowing “why” will help you define your write customer profiles.
Customer Persona is 1 of 4 critical items for brand success. Business and brand success depends on knowing
Most of us balance multiple responsibilities as business owners and product managers. Having a company, audience and competitor profile provides your brand managers, marketing consultants the information necessary to provide thoughtful, strategic strategy recommendations of where to market as well as what visuals and messages resonate with the core audience.
Success doesn't happen on gut decisions or intuition. These steps are crucial to your success and brand longevity. Remember, this is not a once and done process. What worked in the past isn’t enough to maintain or grow your business… especially if your target customer is under 60.
I guarantee if you execute these crucial steps you’ll have the effective branded message that will get results.
Not all organizations are staffed to perform these internally. Over the years, we put into place procedures to create consistent results for our clients.
Well, you don’t have to go it alone. If you’d like help implementing these and our other Brand Pivot™ Steps give me a call.
You may also be interested in these articles:
How to Be Better at Marketing Than Your Competitors
Why Tracking Your Marketing Efforts Is Important?
5 Questions To Use To Define Your Customer Personas