Who is your audience? If you want to get your message out to the right people, you’d better be sure you’re talking directly to them. Depending on your business or industry, it can be a tightrope to walk making sure that you’ve encompassed the right demographic. After all, so many times they overlap. You don’t want to miss anybody! Here are some examples of what I’m talking about:
- A plumbing industry service technician, for instance, will ordinarily buy his hot water heaters from wholesalers, but on weekends during emergency work, no wholesalers are open and they have to shop retail. So the home improvement store caters to both B2B and B2C. The most popular home improvement stores are doing a great job of making sure they don’t miss out on either customer.
- A retail store for young girls has the hottest fashions around, but who makes the purchase – the daughter or the mom? What about gift cards, who makes the purchase then? Mom might buy the card, but the daughter is choosing. And just maybe her boyfriend!
- Floral arrangements never really change too much. The holidays impact the age and gender of the shopper, but overall, everyone buys flowers and someone has a birthday everyday. The difference in the product lines will change per holiday, catering to one gender more than another.
When it comes to online products, like website design and copy, all of those things have to be considered – and they’re quite different depending on the business. The graphics, keywords, and structure all vary based on the target audience just as much as a brick and mortar establishment. Everything from color to font speak not only of the company website and products, but also to the consumer.
Direct mail campaigns don’t use any keyword strategies that a spider might like, but they still need to use the words that will most impact the client they’re aiming for. In direct mail pieces, the tone, color, and graphic choices are the dominant considerations. But so is the mail itself – flier, panel-brochures, or inserts. Occasionally, it can be more important to get in front of the masses than it is to target specific demographics – but more often, marketing campaigns bring in a higher yield when they’re strategic.
There’s quite a bit to consider when you want to increase sales. When you want to be certain you’re targeting the right customer, be prepared to study and refine long-term. Sending out two slightly different models is the best way to test your return on investment (ROI). Change your text slightly and alter the response request on each piece, and see which one brings back the highest return. The next campaign will benefit from that research because you can now remove the lesser performing piece. Testing this way is ongoing, and will improve your understanding of who, exactly, is your best customer.
Testing your ROI between variations in two different mailings or online sales pages is an effective way to learn how to increase customer response. For more information, or questions regarding these methods, you can always hit reply in my E-newsletter. I welcome your comments and questions below as well, and will always respond to real people.
