How to get a handle on your customers

Targeting is the business of identifying the group or groups that will provide the highest level of response to an advertising message. It’s worth spending time on, because nowhere is the old “80:20 Rule” so obvious as in marketing: 80% of revenues will come from 20% of the audience. And the goal of targeting is to focus the message on that 20%.

Let’s say you’ve come out with a new, improved Super-Doohickey which is used by engineers in a certain industry. To effectively target your message, first apply demographic descriptors: industry, job title and size of company for example. Next, apply the psychological descriptors of your best customers: “easily accepts change”, for example, or “finds it important to possess latest technology”.

When you have completed this process, you’ll be able to express a profile of your prime prospect and imagine him or her as a living, breathing individual with a defined set of characteristics. It is this “individual” to whom you should direct your advertising.

Targeting helps you define your advertising message and the way it will be presented to the audience. It also helps you define appropriate vehicles to carry the message. For your Super-Doohickey, you may steer clear of the stodgy old technical journals in favor of “new product” tabloids figuring, rightly, that engineers who are comfortable with new technology are more likely to read the latter.

Before you jump into planning next year’s marketing and advertising, spend some time getting a better handle on who buys your product and why.

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