There are tons of different marketing techniques worldwide; marketers will do what it takes to get your attention! After all, they have a communications budget to get a message out to you, to motivate you to make a buying decision. The problem though, is no one is paying attention!
Too Many Marketing Messages!
The world is small, flat and crowded, and it’s getting increasingly complicated, interconnected and confusing. Anything that can be digitized is being done, and this has created a business environment where we are bombarded with messaging every day – all day long. And… It has created an environment where we no longer pay attention to the messages that are being broadcasted to us.
In fact, it is estimated that we are bombarded with over 5,000 marketing messages each and every day. That works out to about one message every 12 seconds!
What are the Best Marketing Techniques?
If you are a marketer and your job is to get people to pay attention and no one is, what are you to do? Here is my advice. Stop using a shotgun and start using a sniper’s rifle. Most marketers use a very unsophisticated ‘spray and pray’ approach to messaging the market. No strategy. No real specific target audience. No thought to where people are in the buying cycle. You might as well stand on the street corner and throw $5 bills at passing cars – every once in a while, one will stick to the window of one of those cars by pure accident.
Start Here:
- Not everyone is your customer. There are 7 billion people on the planet. Not all of them are going to buy from you. So why would you approach marketing like they would? Get real specific about who your target customers are. Build a detailed profile of who you want as a customer. Think FBI Crime Profiler! Build a profile so crystal clear that you can picture what they look like, where they live, what car they drive, etc.
- Message where and when your target is listening. If your target customer is an 18 to 25-year-old, why would you buy time on a business/talk radio for the morning drive, the newspaper or cable TV? If your target is a 45 to 59-year-old professional, why would you use social media as your way of communicating with them? Be extra focused about your message and where your audience will actually be hanging out and paying attention.
- Keep it simple. Don’t get fancy, long-winded and complicated. People don’t have time to pay attention anymore.
- Change your message depending on where the target is in the buying cycle. Apple is brilliant with these marketing techniques. Watch what they do when they launch a new product. When the latest iPhone comes out, they specifically target people that are early adopters and will line up for three days to be the first to get the new version. Six months later, they shift their messaging to the 70% majority and message the reliability and functions you can use the iPhone for to make your life easier.
- Finally, don’t listen to the experts in the corner offices. Every person on the planet thinks they are a marketing expert. I have lost count of how many executive meetings I have sat in where the marketing team comes in and presents their data and the latest program to drive sales. Then they were shut-down by various executives that have never marketed anything in their lives and… they are not even the target market (which means they haven’t a clue what marketing techniques the target market will respond to). If that sounds like you or people on your senior leadership team, trust your team. If they fail, figure what can be learned from the event and correct course.
Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, and International Keynote Speaker. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
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Tags:
Business Strategy,
It's Already Inside,
Marketing,
Marketing Strategy,
Robert Murray,
Robert S. Murray,
Strategic Marketing
