Are you marketing blindfolded?

blindgamblingMarketing blindfolded (like playing roulette in Vegas) is exciting.  It’s a big gamble for high stakes. But you’re throwing your money away.   I want to talk to you about a highly-pinpointed marketing campaign; one in which you spend money only on reaching your most likely prospects.

People ask me why we are so successful at highly-pinpointed marketing campaigns.  It’s simple. We know what the target audience is interested in.  Thus the marketing message cuts through the noise, sticks in their head and moves them toward a sale.

People have heard our war stories.  The time we rolled out direct response TV ads that pulled 438 phone calls the first four times it aired.  I’ll never forget that day.  The first TV spot was supposed to air at 2:14 in the afternoon.  At 2:14 and 15 seconds, I got a call from our client.  “The phones aren’t ringing.  We’ve cleared all the lines and the phones aren’t riging.”

Marketing Blindfolded

I said, “Well, it’s not 2:14 yet.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“It was a sixty second spot.” I said, “so you’ll start getting calls in about 25 more seconds.”

There was a silence.

Then, she said, “Oh my god, I gotta go the phones are lit up.  Call you later.”

That’s how our marketing campaigns work.  We’re pretty good at this.  We’ve adapted to the new style of marketing.

In old style marketing (interruptive marketing) you jumped in front of someone’s face and blurted out the company message in thirty seconds if you were on TV (more “hang time” if it were a printed piece. But things have changed.

The buying public today has deflector shields up for this type of marketing.  Very little gets through those shields unless the target audience is interested in it.  That’s part one.  Part two is, once you’re past their deflector shields you have to say something that moves them to DO something or at least change an opinion, which will lead to them to do something – hopefully buying the product or service.

So marketing campaigns should have stages (milestones) which will ultimately lead to the success of a campaign. It helps to determine these milestones before the campaign.   The campaign may be designed to 1) change one’s opinion of the product, 2) expand one’s awareness of the product’s capabilities, or 3) prompt one to consider buying the product (or service).

It’s all about moving the target audience toward a sale.

But the key to successful and effective marketing plans and campaigns is to design with laser precision so your message  “talks” to what your target audience is interested in.   How do we do that?  We survey your primary, target audience.  We find out why people buy and continue to buy your product or service or maybe why they stopped buying it.  We find out more about your customer so they will lower their deflector shields.  Then, we create a “smorgasbord” of messages that will be tempting to your target audience. We test these message first, inexpensively. Then, we pick the winners and we roll out the campaign, in stages, with milestones for each.

So, it’s all about knowing your customer and your potential customer.   If you skip that step, you’re just marketing blind.

- See more at: http://blog.theassociation.tv/blog/the-association/page/4#sthash.FEZaGm4n.dpuf

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