Pay attention - I have something to say!
Hard to imagine a better time to be a marketer. Hard to imagine a worse time to be a marketer.
Which way do you lean? Do you wake each morning in a lather of perspiration dreading the day that is to come or champing at the bit desperate to get the day started?
Far too many of us our now faced with the number one challenge as a marketer.
“How to get a customer’s attention”
Never has the job of creatives been so challenging, so vital or so under appreciated. Yes, we all have access to this amazing data that tells us so much about the customer or prospect. But, what we don’t have is the ability to get their attention so that we can show them just how relevant our communications are. The customer does not care, probably never has, and now it is even easier to ignore every channel that bombards them with messages. Has anyone else just stopped looking at all the messages. Do you get way too many?
My wife subscribes to everything. Her email box is full every day. She loves cruising though her marketing emails and seeing what is on offer. But she buys nothing. When she is ready to buy, she will go to her favourite website, grab the credit card and start shopping. So, all those emails that bombard her every day, what is their purpose?
Off-line has the same issue. Unless it is great, imaginative, personal and interesting, it just gets a glance and then forgotten.
So, while we are sitting there thinking that the next target audience is just waiting to get your message and then respond, think again. You must be ready for the hard work it takes to get a customer to pay attention to your brand and message and to then motivate them to respond.
If you are a “big brand” with a larger budget, then this can be a bit easier. You can experiment with a number of different options and settle on a campaign built to take advantage of an integrated communications path using multiple channels and multiple agencies to assist with the campaign’s execution.
But, if you are a small to medium sized enterprise then this is a whole lot harder. So here are three things to do:
Rifle point identification of a target audience that is the best fit for the offer you are about unleash – not everyone, just the very core of people that should respond, and you must be thinking of a tight audience where you are expecting all of them to respond. Smaller is better if you can identify the right 100, it is better than sending the message to 10,000 to find the right 100.
Spend some money on really good, brave, bold and exciting creative. Do not rely on people that are NOT creative people to develop creative on your behalf. And if the creative does not scare you a little, then it is probably not good enough. With a smaller target audience, you will have the budget to get great ideas created for you.
Pick the two channels that will work best for you and spend all of the budget in these two channels – don’t do any more or less but use them well and resource them properly.
And lastly, make sure your website is amazing…not good, not great…amazing. This is the showcase for everything that you will do and if it is not generating enquiries, delivering prospects then it fails. Again, good people exist that will make your website sing a song for each person that comes to the site.
Let me know if you some help with your next campaign.