The other day I was talking with a colleague about their marketing strategy and the subject of targeted marketing came up. What is it? How do I use it? Why target? How is this any different than what I’m already doing? And that was the big question, aren’t I already doing that?
So, let’s look at that for a moment, I replied…hoping that the explanation that was forming in my head made the kind of sense it made to me.
Imagine, if you will, a group of a dozen or so people lined up facing you, their backs up against a wall. These are the people you want to hear about your product, your institution, or whatever else you have to say— they’re your audience.
…that should be written with a capital A, because they’re important… your Audience!
Now, in our little scenario, what you want to say to the Audience is represented by a large custard pie…with whipped cream…a lot of whipped cream…because that makes it more fun. You are going to toss that pie at your Audience to see how many people you can hit with it.
The pie is important too, it represents your marketing efforts. Your message, the marketing channel, or channels, you are going to use to get your message out to your Audience, all of that.
At this point in the exercise, you have a couple of choices. You can walk over to the little cart that they wheel out just before any really good pie fight starts and pick out one ginormous pie to throw at the whole group in front of you. (We have permission to ignore the laws of physics for our exercise.)
If you choose this route, you are going to have to bake up a pie that is big enough to hit your entire Audience with one throw, which is a pretty big pie. Then, once you throw the pie, you are going to have to live with the fact that a whole lot of the effort you put into delivering that pie is going to be wasted on the wall behind your Audience, but you will hit everybody and that was the goal.
Oh, and there is no guarantee that any of them are going to stand still and let you hit them with your pie—they can duck behind a neighbor, or drop to the ground, or just turn around and ignore your pie altogether. They can be really inconsiderate that way. So, the pie may be big enough to hit everybody, but that doesn’t mean everybody gets custard in their face.
Your other option is to grab a regular sized pie to throw. But this time, you are going to take your time and aim as carefully as you can before you throw and you are going to pick the one member of your Audience that you know you really, really want to hit in the face with your pie. Hey, you may even ask someone to hold that person still so you’re sure you won’t miss. And you can walk right up to them to ensure they aren’t going to have a chance to dodge.
In this case, you have a really good chance of hitting the person you are aiming for. And, if you throw just right, the splatter from your pie is probably going to hit the people next to your target as well, which is that much better.
Both of these approaches to pie throwing have their advantages, they just work differently.
The ginormous pie approach covers everybody with custard, but it takes a mighty big pie to make that happen. And in the real world pie is expensive. But, if you have the money, a big old pie can be a lot of fun and get a lot of custard all over the crowd of people you want to hit.
The single target approach has a much better chance of having an impact that is sure to make the right point, you just have to make sure you are taking the time to aim right. …and it might be a bit more satisfying if the target is someone who really, really deserves to get hit with a pie.
What most people don’t realize, is that this is pretty much how marketing works, even today. It’s a bunch of people standing at one end of a room tossing pies at the people at the other end of the room and hoping they hit somebody. It’s about throwing your message out there to see who you can hit. Targeted marketing is really about knowing how to take better aim with the pie, and who to aim it at.
There are a lot of reasons why targeted marketing is a good choice: it can be more accountable for its results, it takes less money to implement, and it can reach the people you really want to reach. But then, sometimes a ginormous pie is a good idea too. It all depends on your marketing goals.
What you do need to ask is who do you want to hit and why. If all you’re doing is throwing the biggest pie at your Audience that you can, you’re probably not targeting them. You’re just hoping that somehow you’re going to get enough custard on them that they’ll develop a taste for your product. If, on the other hand, you’re carefully choosing who you hit, where you hit them, and what kind of pie you hit them with, you’re probably targeting them effectively. That’s how you know if “you’re already doing it.” Ask yourself if you’re throwing a big pie and trying to hit everybody, or a little pie that’s aimed directly at that one guy that keeps looking at you like he thinks you took his parking spot this morning.
Just remember, the key to making the targeting work, is the knowing how to aim it part.
There’s nothing sadder than a badly aimed pie.