Spend Wisely; Target Prospects by Lou Lasday

Spend Wisely; Target Prospects

By Lou Lasday

Here's the radical rethinking in modern day marketing. It's today's hottest business trend: the concept of getting closer-and-closer to the end-user of your product or service. It's the miniaturization of strategic marketing initiatives.

Most businesses follow the traditional thinking of mass marketing. This aging concept involves promotion of your offering to the most number of people at the lowest possible per-thousand audience cost. It's logical; except for the waste!

Then, the question becomes, "what is my real cost for real prospects?"

Metro madness

Expensive, large space advertising in a typical metro daily, as an example, is virtually uncontrollable from a standpoint of your limited budget. That's because their declining circulation is uncontrollable for the most part. It shoots out like a shotgun blast scattering everywhere and touching a slice of the world - the rich, the poor, the educated, the uneducated, the singles, the families, the newly wed and the nearly dead.

Not the paper route

An alternative and one worth buying into for Tampa Bay/Gulf Coast entrepreneurs, is to strategically determine exactly who is right for you by taking a sheet of paper and writing the basic qualifications of a prospective new customer or client you would seek. Determine what he or she "looks like:" what demographic profile (age, income, education) and psycographics (lifestyles) you want to reach with your advertising dollars. Again, that's logical, you say.

So many otherwise thinking marketing executives will automatically spend thousands of dollars every month in general circulation metro media of all kinds. They have as their collective goals to sell high-end luxury foreign cars, financial planning targeted to multi-millionaires, waterfront real estate to second and third home buyers while the medium average reader they are reaching has a portfolio excluding primary residence of under $100,000 and earns less than $48,000 per year. While your cost per thousand number is low, your qualified audience is even lower. In reality, the folks you want to reach may be a small fraction of the total circulation you pay for.

Zeroing in

The zeroing in on truly "qualified" suspects in the first place, even when it costs more to reach them, will actually increase results and your direct, traceable, tangible reponse. That's part of the miniaturization of marketing and the maximization of your advertising effectiveness. If you want to reach millionaires, for example, doesn't it make good sense to seek out what millionaires read and listen to?

It's the difference between trying to reach "everyone" and focusing in on "someone." Do you want "waste circulation" or do you want a "qualified audience?" Are you paying for and reaching tons of lookers, seekers, wanna-bees and other unqualified window shoppers who probably spend less than a few minutes considering all the message noise?

One-to-one

Drilling deeper into the miniaturization concept, authors Don Peppers and Martha Rogers in their classic forward-thinking book, "The One-To-One Future," focus not on traditional terms such as share-of-market, but rather "share-of-customer," one customer at a time.

The concept features focusing on customers you already have by finding that percentage of your existing base; that 2%, 10 or 15% who are the most loyal and who offer the biggest opportunity for future profit.

Building relationships one-customer at-a-time is the ultimate miniaturization. Developing this quality collaboration is just as you now work with individual suppliers as marketing partners. Nurture your relationship with each customer by relying on one-to-one communication vehicles - not just mass media - but by zeroing in on well read specialized weekly business print that has the audience you want and receive or focused business broadcast media and then follow through on leads with a planned program of contacts. Initiate a call, e-mail, personal note, a referral, an invitation by mail, a seminar, a brochure or video tape.

The final word

The important message here is that terms such as mass marketing, marketing ROI, measurement, segmentation, stratification and channeling are simply jargon. For the Gulf Coast entrepreneur, every customer, client or prospect is a living, breathing human being - an intelligent individual with a consistently evolving set of hopes, dreams and frustrations and, of course, specific needs which you can best fulfill.

Instead of reaching the nice folks with a one-size-fits-all message, think in terms of marketing communication that creates a customized controllable group "conversation" message with an individual; one-on-one, like chatting with friends.

Lou Lasday, an independent marketing adviser who resides on Longboat Key, creates action-oriented strategic corporate initiatives for Gulf Coast emerging companies. A career direct response executive, he has been a general partner of a national marketing communications firm and regional president of the American Marketing Association.