Are Your Marketing Messages Unclear . . . Are You Sending Messages About Cats To Dog Lovers?
April 25th, 2012 by Diane Conklin under Direct Mail, Information Marketing, Marketing. No Comments.
I received a gardening magazine and a chef magazine in the mail the other day. I have no idea why. I grew up on a farm so I pulled weeds and did yard work more than the average person. Now don’t get me wrong, I love a beautiful yard, flowers, and all that – as long as somebody else does the work. If it were up to me to take care of, I’d tear the lawn up, pour concrete, and paint it green – no fuss, no muss.
And, although I am a good cook, and enjoy doing it when I do cook or bake – mostly during the holiday seasons, there are about 1
00 things I’d rather spend my time doing than cooking.
What does any of this have to do with the marketing topic of message to market match? Everything! If you owned a gardening supply company why would you want to waste money sending your (expensive, full color) catalog to somebody who has less than zero interest in what you’re selling? You wouldn’t.
And, the real question is how much money is this gardening company spending (wasting) sending the same (expensive, full color) catalog to potentially thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people who have no interest in gardening.
There simply isn’t a match in the product and the person they sent it to. No messages to market match in this case.
Would you send a dog lover and owner, who is allergic to cats, information about your newsletter on Persian cats, to try to get them to buy? Of course not. It seems silly to even suggest. But that’s exactly what the gardening and chef companies are doing.
The more targeted you message is to your market the more likely they are to buy from you – because they already have a keen interest in what you have to offer them. You have the advantage of entering their minds and having a discussion about something they are already thinking about and that puts you in a position of strength from the start.
By spending some time getting to know who your customers are, demographically and psychographically, you will save yourself thousands of dollars on printing and mailing that you won’t need to do. As a smart business owner and marketer, you’ll only be talking to those people who already have an interest in your area.
