To Be Successful, You Must Know Your Audience

As I alluded to in my previous posts about fishing, you need to know who your audience is to reach them effectively. To return to the fishing analogy, you won't catch ANY fish if you use Godiva chocolate as bait. In addition, you'll spend a boatload of money on bait, and have nothing to show for it!

You also need to be in the right place as well as use the right bait. You can have the best bait, but you won't catch any tuna if the boat you're fishing from is bobbing in Lake Michigan. To paraphrase Willie Sutton, he robbed banks because "that's where the money is". So you want to your message message has to be the right message AND it has to be visible to your customers; in order for them to see it.

So, you need to make sure you reach the people most likely to purchase your product or service with the right message (bait) and the right place (someplace that will reach your desired audience).

If you're selling 316L Stainless Steel, you would target people making steel products that need to be corrosion resistant. If you decide to target water bottle manufacturers for the sake of discussion, what's the most efficient way to reach them? Probably not radio or television. Print ads in a local newspaper? Maybe. Manufacturing Trade Shows? Better, but how many trade shows are there? Two or three or four a year? Not too many chances to send out your message to your audience. A Trade Magazine? Probably a good choice, because you can advertise in each issue. If it's published monthly, you have at least 12 attempts to get your potential customer to see your ad.

As a twist, why not put a space ad in the Trade Magazine? In the ad say, "see us at Booth 212 at The Stainless Steel Water Bottle Show in Cleveland, TN (or Cleveland, Tx or Cleveland, Ohio). Mention this ad and get a free Stainless Steel ID Bracelet or get a free iTunes download on us."

This has several benefits. You will reach more people because your ad will be seen more frequently than a booth at a Trade Show. Because it will be in the magazine for a number of consecutive issues, casual readers who don't read each issue can be exposed to your product. You will also reach some people that don't read the magazine, but do attend the show (and vice versa). But the really good thing about an ad with a freebie like the bracelet or iTunes download, is you can capture the people that come to claim the premium AND you will see how many people see and remember your Trade Magazine ad!


Thanks for reading.