There are two ways to approach marketing. There is the shotgun approach, where you try to get your message out to anyone you can. In other words, you are throwing a handful of darts at the board and hoping some of them hit. Then, there is the targeted approach, where you hone in on a specific audience and make more strategic efforts to connect with only the people you want to reach. Bullseye!
A Big Picture Perspective
To the untrained marketer, it may make sound like a good idea to use a shotgun approach because you want as many people to be exposed to your brand, products and services as possible. For some massive companies, it kind of makes sense. Take Coca-Cola for example. They spend millions (if not billions) of dollars every year in marketing and their brand messaging is just about anywhere you look. Why? Because people from just about every demographic like to drink Coke. And don’t forget they have a massive marketing budget that allows them to advertise everywhere.
Looking Closer
However, when you look closer, you can actually see that Coca-Cola uses a lot of targeted marketing. Different commercials might run on different channels or programs depending on the average viewer demographics. They are using social media to target specific groups of people effectively. Remember when they started putting names on bottles in recent years? That is a great gimmick that has worked with millennials, and even the names they put on the bottles and distribute to different parts of the country are carefully picked to attract certain segments of the population.
So, on the surface it may seem that Coca-Cola uses a shotgun approach, but it’s because they’ve adopted target audience marketing more and more over the years that has made them—and will continue to make them—the world’s leading soft drink brand.
What Are Your Marketing Goals?
As a small business, you do not have a marketing budget in the millions. Targeted marketing allows you to get more bang for your buck. You can identify your ideal target audience and use strategic marketing approaches to reach them specifically.
First, you must identify your ideal audience that is most likely to relate to your brand, buy your products or use your services. You may have more than one target audience, which is fine. Just know that you will be splitting your focus (and your budget) to reach multiple groups. The audience breakdown may be based solely on geography (your town/region) or by demographics (age, ethnicity, etc.).
Once you have your audience(s) identified, you need to develop your marketing materials (print, online, social media, blog, SEO tags, etc.) to speak to that audience’s fears, needs and desires. Then, you need to distribute in ways that will reach that audience more directly. Social media has really streamlined the idea of target marketing. Most platforms make it easy to create very targeted ads and promote posts toward a pre-defined demographic audience based on age, location, interests, consumer habits, careers and more. Use this technology to your advantage and focus your marketing spending to attract the people you want to attract.
Take Advantage of Targeted Marketing
When it comes to marketing, especially for small businesses, a shotgun approach is rarely a good plan. Take a more targeted approach and you will see the difference in response from consumers who are more interested in what you have to offer.
For more information about target marketing and how to develop more targeted web content, email and social media campaigns, contact NextGear Marketing today for a free consultation.
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