Nobody gets Targeted by Small Business Advertising if Everyone is Targeted
One of the most important aspects in advertising is targeting. It’s important to stand out from your competition, especially when trying to appeal to a specific audience. Showing that you’ll go above and beyond your for your audience’s needs is also very important. There is sometimes a temptation in small business advertising and marketing to try to be everything to everyone. Too often, the end result of this type of “one size fits all” marketing approach is that the audience you are trying to reach can’t recognize that your product or service is specifically geared towards them.
A lot of products and services are not made for everyone equally. If you’re advertising to people that don’t want or need your product, then you’re wasting your advertising resources. Small businesses often make the mistake of thinking that their target audience is bigger than what it really is. Rather than aim their advertising more towards a specific niche, a lot of small businesses go the brand awareness approach, where they try to attract customers that may be interested in their product in the future. Thanks to extremely high advertising budgets, big corporations can often have this approach work for them, but for small business it’s too high of a risk. Rather than increasing brand awareness, small business advertising resources lose their effectiveness by not targeting a specific audience.
When it comes to advertising, people are more interested in the direct benefits that apply to them. There’s a good chance of attracting them as customers if they are currently interested in a company’s product or service. And of course, those that aren’t interested will simply ignore the advertisements. If you put a lot in trying to attract the uninterested group, then don’t expect a lot in return.
Small business advertising efforts are maximized by following the first step, identifying your target audience. The perfect customer is the one that would best benefit from your product or service. This customer would also be the one that you would most enjoy doing business with, and the one from whom you could profit the most. Finding out your “ideal customer” not only puts a face on your target audience, but it also helps you find out what method to use in your advertising, even though most advertising is aimed towards a specific niche.
For example, when considering print advertising, instead of advertising in a wide variety of magazines, ads should be focused towards the specific types of magazines that would appeal to the ideal customer, and advertisements should be fine-tuned to appeal specifically to the target audience. If you’re wanting to use direct mail advertising, then use demographics to target households and businesses that meet certain customer criteria. And when using internet marketing, you can fine-tune your advertising by creating various landing pages that target different types of audience.
If you use this targeted marketing approach, your small business advertising can be a lot more effective. Sure you may once in a while grab someone outside of your target audience every once in a while. But attracting your ideal customer is a lot more likely.
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