The Danger of OverTargetting

The Danger of OverTargetting

The goal of your advertising should be to increase both your sales and your brand identity. But all too often we get hung up on targeting analytics or demographics when creating our media plans.  Narrowly targeting oftentimes means you are missing the much larger population of people not in your “bullseye”.

As the “New Media” (digital and social) emerged, many businesses, large and small, made the move to these platforms believing that laser-focused targeting was the answer to their advertising dreams. 

Wrong!  In fact, Tide, the #1 selling laundry detergent, found that while they were focusing on the people that fit their “typical profile”, they were missing the much larger target of those that were not using their product. In other words, they were eroding the awareness of their brand and they were missing the target of “new and future” users. Ultimately their sales started to decline.

In a swift move, they moved the majority of their budget back to traditional media, and sales and brand identity rebounded.

In another example, it might not seem unreasonable for a baby-products retailer to target “women 18-49 with infants”, but according to the market research firm Scarborough, nearly half of those who bought infants’ clothing, 47% were from households without children.

The same research from Scarborough found that nearly a quarter of all women’s cosmetics and perfumes, 23.5%, were bought by men.

In Roy Williams’ Twelve Causes of Advertising Failure, #9 is Overconfidence in Qualitative Data. “In reality, saying the wrong thing has killed far more ad campaigns than reaching the wrong people. It is amazing how many people become the ‘Right People’ when you are saying the right thing.”

Thinking beyond the traditional demographics your competitors are targeting with their advertising can help you reach into untapped markets to increase your sales.

Click here to read how to reach and influence “purchasers” rather than “demographics”.
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10 Common Mistakes in Marketing from Roy

Last month I got an email from Roy Williams that I’m going to share in it’s entirety.

Agree or Disagree?  Contact me and let’s talk.  ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom

10 Most Common Mistakes in Marketing

 

1 Inappropriate Use of Social Media

The whole world is on FaceBook, but is that the right place for your product or service to be advertised? To get a clear idea of the kinds of offers that are working well on FaceBook, go to the Success Stories page at FaceBook.com. Judging from this list of success stories, it would appear that FaceBook works extremely well for getting people together socially, not so well for hard goods and services.

(HINT: I think there may be a reason they call it “social” media.)

2 Overconfidence in the Value of Targeting

Jeffrey Eisenberg insightfully points out that, “online customers are exactly the same people as offline customers, yet advertisers tend to think of them as an entirely different species.” For the same amount of money it costs you to reach 5 tightly targeted customers online, you can reach 5 customers who have that same profile PLUS 127 of their friends by using broadcast TV or radio. Do you want your brand to be the one people think of immediately and feel the best about when they finally need what you sell?

3 The Assumption that Every Message is Relevant

Why does every advertiser believe their product or service category to be intrinsically interesting? More than information, entertainment is the currency with which you can happily buy your prospective customer’s time and attention. But most ads have zero entertainment value.

4 Fear of Criticism

Most ads aren’t written to persuade. They’re written not to offend. But any message that has the power to move people will always move some of them in the wrong direction. When you’ve written a good ad, you must brace the advertiser for the negative backlash they will receive from people who are anxious to be offended. The only alternative to this is to forever settle for ads that are mushy, mundane and mediocre. Please don’t.

5 Measuring Ad Effectiveness Too Quickly

Its claim to “instantly and accurately measure every ad’s effectiveness” is part of what makes digital marketing so appealing to advertisers. But didn’t you say you want your brand to be the one people think of immediately and feel the best about when they finally need what you sell? This requires ongoing advertising and longer measurement cycles. You cannot hold every ad immediately accountable and expect to build relationship with your customer.

6 Unsubstantiated Claims

Adjectives are the marks of an ad filled with empty rhetoric. Verbs are the marks of an ad that demonstrates its claims. Verbs – action words – “show” your customer what your product can do. Fluffy adjectives simply “tell” them. In the words of Christopher J. Maddock, “Show, don’t tell.”

7 Believing that “Old” Media No Longer Works

It is true that you need a website and that most customers are going to visit your website before making first contact with you. Therefore, it’s vital that your website be a good one. But if you believe that online marketing is the most efficient way to drive traffic to your website, you need to go back and read Most Common Mistake #2. Do you want to see a massive jump in the effectiveness of your online ads? Begin advertising on radio or television. But Take Note: your elevated metrics will make it appear as though your online efforts are working magically well when, in fact, the credit should be attributed to mass media.

8 Assuming “The Decision Maker” Is The Only Person You Need to Reach

Decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. You must also win the influencers if you want to create a successful brand. If you don’t value the opinions of influencers you’ll evolve into a direct-response marketer. But does your business category lend itself to direct response?

9 Believing that “Millennials” Aren’t Like the Rest of Us

Millennials aren’t a tribe, they are a collection of tribes. They do not behave as a single, cohesive birth cohort. Google “Millennials” and the dictionary definition that will pop up will show the word “millennial” most commonly used in this sentence: “The industry brims with theories on what makes millennials tick.” But when you look at a list of what millennials supposedly want, it’s exactly what the rest of us want. Yes, they’re not like we “50-somethings” used to be, but then we’re not like we used to be, either.

10 AdSpeak

People don’t hate advertising; they hate boring advertising; they hate predictable advertising. They hate the time-wasting, life-sucking sound of too many words wrapped around too small an idea. They hate AdSpeak. But they love entertainment. Learn to purchase your customer’s time and attention and goodwill with delightful, interesting, entertaining ads.

Come to Wizard Academy and we’ll teach you how.

Roy H. Williams

Two Ways To Target Your Advertising

Wrapping up a three-parter on mass media and advertising with a smarter way to spend your marketing budget.

First we looked at the changes in mass media and then we explored the idea of mass media marketing today.

Today, I’ll show you how to pick the advertising mediums that make sense for you.

It’s all about targeting. z

If I am selling funeral insurance, I don’t want to spend my advertising money delivering my message to teenagers.

If I am selling orthodontics, I don’t want to spend my advertising money delivering my message to people with dentures.

Mass media has specific information about their individual audiences.  I can tell you the age range of all of the Fort Wayne radio station audiences and the number of listeners to each station according to the latest data that I get twice a year.  Mix that information with the other sources and I can give you recommendations for what stations to consider based on who you want to reach with your message.

There is one other way to target that is possible due to the advances in technology.  I’m talking about online digital ads.  Imagine if you could pinpoint your advertising to only be seen by people who are interested in what you have to sell? Would that be of value? 

I see you’re nodding your head in agreement.

There are multiple ways I can do this that is independent of what I do with my radio stations, however, it may make sense to do both and have me handle the coordination of everything.

After all, you have a business to run.  You have your area of expertise that people are paying you money to provide.  I have mine too. My area of expertise is to help you target your advertising messages to invite people to spend their money with you.  Contact me for help.