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You’ve hear it before-adjust your message to your audience. It’s a trite saying, but what does it
mean and how do you do it? Furthermore, if you have that part down pat and are not adjusting
your marketing to capture your target audience’s eyes and ears you have missed the boat entirely.
There’s nothing worse than giving a talk to a group of ten-year-olds that was written for the
scientific community. In effect, that is exactly what you are doing if you fail to target your
message to your audience. The result of your speech falls on cement and the bottom line-you
wasted a ton of time and energy, both yours and your audience’s to boot. While adjusting your
message is vital to the success of any business, without adjusting your marketing as well your
business will flounder and fail.
First, sit down and figure out who your target audience is. Where do they hang out? Do they still
search the Yellow Pages or are they adept at using the online search engines? Do they get their
news from the newspaper or TV, or do they get their news online? Do they read digital information
products or in-hand books and magazines? What about Twitter, Facebook and the like? Once you
have this information you will better understand the makeup of your target market. This will
enable you to create a marketing campaign that will result in increased recognition and sales.
Now that you know where they hang out the next step is to use the mediums they prefer to market
to them in a way that is compelling and clearly demonstrates how to take advantage of your product
or service. Just knowing where to find them is a help but using these mediums incorrectly can be
just as damaging as not using them at all-maybe even more so.
If you don’t know where to start, begin by following your competition around. Look at what they
are using to market their businesses and how they present their case. This will tell you much
about what works and what doesn’t. Try to glean from their advertising tidbits to help you better
create your marketing message.
One such online medium that is gaining popularity among the 20 plus crowd is Twitter. Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central puts it this way, “Social media offers new opportunities to activate…brand enthusiasm.” So, if your audience hangs out on Twitter, then you too should be twittering.
However, don’t just post inane messages and thus waste your time and theirs. Don’t just shout your message out, you could ultimately damage your reputation and repel your target audience altogether.
Begin by listening to what your target audience is saying about your company or industry. Listen carefully and they will tell you what they want and need. Then gear your marketing message towards fulfilling those gaps. You may find that just offering direction or advice will cause them to sit up and take notice of you so that they are prepared to listen when you tell them how to fill their needs. My advice to you, be truthful, timely and most importantly, fun.
Once you have their trust you may be surprised how quickly they help you spread the word with
what is known as re-tweets. Now you have a whole new set of avid fans who will take your message
even further than you could dream of doing by yourself. Remember, it’s all about creating a ‘buzz’.
Use your knowledge to enlighten your audience and then offer an easily accessible solution. Be direct
and clear as to how to obtain the help you are offering. Don’t take them down a path to your product
or service. Rather, tell them exactly where to go to obtain it, not more information about it. Yes, you
may also want to include a link to more information, but for those who don’t need it, don’t waste their
time-you risk losing them along the way.
© Copyright 2009 Ginger Marks
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