A lot of people get caught up with the visual aspect of their mail pieces, ads, and social media accounts. Of course, everyone wants to have an attractive marketing campaign. But is that really the most important consideration when it comes to effective marketing?
The first thing to think about is who you’re targeting, and how you’re going to reach them. Those factors are what really lead to results in your campaigns. If you only focus on aesthetics, your marketing will be like a luxury car with no gas; it looks beautiful, and will make an impression on the few who see it, but it won’t get you anywhere!
So how do you know what fuel is best for your particular marketing campaign?
The right fuel is determined by what your objectives are, who your audience is, and the best way to reach that audience. Remember, the who and the how. These two words could be put as two specific questions:
- What data do I need for my marketing?
- How do I reach my customers?
What Data Do I Need For My Marketing?
The data you need is based on what you know about the people you’re trying to reach, and what your goal is with this campaign. What you know about who you’re trying to reach tells you your demographic, and helps you answer the how question later on. Your campaign goal helps you decide on channels and scale.
To narrow down the type of people you’re trying to reach, ask yourself these sorts of questions:
- What are their basic demographics? Think gender, age, location, relationship status, and education level.
- What do they do for work? What is their job title, and are they a decision-maker? Do they have a lot of influence in their workplace?
- What are their interests? Their hobbies? What do they do in their free time? Are they part of a specific community?
- What are their problems? Figure out their pain points. These are what your product or service is going to solve. Know their goals, dreams, and what keeps them up at night.
- Why wouldn’t they buy from you? What’s stopping them from buying from you right now? What objections might they have?
There are a couple more questions, but we’re going to save those for the next section.
Knowing Your Customers
Once you’re able to answer these questions, you can construct a sort of buyer persona, the type of person that you want to buy your product. Then, you know what data to use for list-making and marketing. The criteria in the five questions above are simple selects on most consumer and business databases.
Knowing your target customer not only allows you to send mail pieces and ads to the right people, but also allows you to design these in the most appealing way possible. For instance, if you’re marketing to businesspeople who don’t have much time, make your units as simple and to-the-point as possible. If you’re marketing to animal-lovers, include animal graphics if they’re relevant to your product.
How Do I Reach My Customers?
Now it’s time for a couple more questions to pick out the best channels and methods to reach your future buyers:
- How would they prefer to interact with you? Do they love Facebook? Do they dislike picking up the phone? Are they excited to receive mail?
- How are you most likely to reach them? Think about where they spend the most time. Are they on social media a lot? Do they check their email? Do they drive past billboards frequently?
- What medium is best suited to your product? Can a static ad do your product justice, or is a video better?
- At what scale do I want to push my product? Is it even practical and cost-effective to send out mail pieces? Are you better off investing in digital ads?
These questions help make your blows count. If your advertisements are hitting people the wrong way, they’re less likely to engage with them, and you’re less likely to see results.
This is where the objective of your campaign comes back in. Maybe you’re not even selling a specific product, and just want visibility. Maybe your demographic is so specific that you only want to reach 100 people. Certain channels will be more or less effective depending on the goal of your marketing.
Answering the questions in this article is a must-have step in planning out your next campaign. If any of your upcoming campaigns deal with social media marketing, we highly recommend another article that discusses the formula for crafting engaging content.
