Are you on target?

Know your audience.  Marketing 101 stuff, right?

So, when was the last time you reviewed your documented ideal target audience? If your answer is vague and reminds you of how you answer the dental hygienist when asked about flossing, it’s time to review it.

Why should you bother?

1. Are you hiring this year? If so, a current ideal target audience will help shorten a new sales person’s learning curve. Time is money.
2. Are you evaluating events to speak at or attend? Your marketing team will be more effective in evaluating the right events to prioritize where the investment is spent if they can efficiently evaluate the event attendees against your ideal target audience.
3. Messaging. Basic, I know, but really important to make sure your marketing message is revised and refined to speak to the ideal target audience.
4. Media. Is PR part of your marketing strategy for awareness and credibility? If so, a documented target audience will help your marketing team or your PR agency fine-tune their media list and prioritize the media to target for coverage.
5. Social media. Directly linked to messaging, but too many companies waste time with an unfocused social media effort. Groups (e.g., LinkedIn)can be a very effective way to dramatically increase awareness and credibility but you need to know who you want to reach for the social media specialists to develop the right content, hash tags and engage with the right groups to attain ROI.
6. Alignment. This probably should be #1 on the list as having an ideal target audience in someone’s head does not scale. At a minimum sales and marketing (hopefully not the same group nor the same people!) work together to develop the ideal target audience and then revisit and refine with feedback from sales on a periodic basis.

This week we worked with one client to updated their ideal target audience. It had been a year.  It was great to see the progress in how much more we (marketing and sales) know about our ideal target audience in 12 months! The clarity of the refined target audience is already making an impact as we just today passed on an event given the target audience was not aligned with our priorities (time and money savings).  With new sales folks joining the company, this is a great way to help them prioritize their contacts in their iPhones/Rolodexes to help them get started with a targeted sales plan for their territory.

If you have never documented your ideal customer/client, do that first.  In no particular order, write down everything that makes your ideal client ideal. Then convert that list of characteristics (include key parameters including but not limited to geography (if relevant), industry, company type, size, attitude/outlook, needs, title/role) into your first documented ideal target audience. At least annually, review it. I bet you will be amazed at what you learn and how it helps you and your business.  After all, having an ideal target audience is fundamental to building a business on a solid marketing foundation.

 

Marketing and advertising…huh?

Do you ever cringe when you have to select a drop down box?  Maybe it is the age range and you have now been bumped into the next age group…that is a bummer.  But, honestly, my worst nightmare is when I am asked for my career category or to indicate specific expertise within the broad (and largely misunderstood) world of “marketing”.  This makes me crazier than moving up in an age category!

I enjoy the challenge of being an evangelist for marketing.  I am ok with explaining to CEOs and presidents of companies that marketing is not a project that can be done for 2 weeks and be checked off the list.  I am fine with explaining to engineers that launching a commercial product at an event at the end of January will take more effort than the requested “create some graphics”, a PDF and get an email blast out the door.  In a sick sort of way, I enjoy carrying the “why marketing matters” banner:  chipping away with examples and analogies to help others understand where marketing fits in to grow their business on an ongoing basis.

What I don’t understand is the random categories that are developed to put us marketers in a box!  I have found marketing as a subcategory within the main category of Human Resources in one such crazy drop down box list that the state created.  Instead of beating my head against a brick wall, I emailed the responsible group explaining that if marketing companies were going to be interested in working on state projects, it was not encouraging to be categorized as part of HR and also was highly unlikely that companies seeking marketing services companies would find them buried within the HR category.  No response on that email.

So what got me on this soap box today?   I was quickly doing some updates on LinkedIn and added a service on the FMM company listing.  As I added the new service, LinkedIn prompted me to select the category that this service fit into.  The only relevant choice was:  ‘marketing and advertising’.  Huh?!  LinkedIn has many marketing professional groups.  I find many of the groups interactions to be thought-provoking and relevant.  How can we get LinkedIn to “GET” that marketing and advertising is not a category of services?  Why is one specific marketing element (‘advertising’) being called out over any other potential marketing element that may be relevant in executing marketing?  If they want to list subcategories under marketing, great but advertising does not belong at the same level in the category listing.

Ay yi yi.  Tonight, I am again reminded that I view marketing broadly.  I raise my banner higher as to why marketing matters and why I will continue to work on evangelizing what marketing is and why it really matters. Look out LinkedIn!