When it comes to marketing, businesses have FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). They have such a fear in fact, that they tend to try and cast the widest net possible to reach as many audiences as possible offering everything they do – because getting your message in front of more people equals more business right?
Wrong.
The thing is, if you try to be all things to all people, you don’t actually end up serving anyone at all. This couldn’t be any more true when businesses try to market to everyone.
Marketing to everyone doesn’t work
The problem with casting your net wide is that you become too general and without a target, you’ll likely catch nothing or the wrong type of client. People don’t respond well to generalities, we’re interested in our selves and our own specific needs and our own specific problems or challenges.
Even more so in today’s world of social media and digital technology, we are being bombarded with masses and masses of information all of the time, so much so that we have adapted and have become quite apt at filtering through it.
We can’t possibly consume everything that we read so when we see a generic message, we tend to filter it out and ignore it, it’s just not of interest. Think of scrolling down your social media feeds to find something that tweaks your interest, how much do you skim through?
Many businesses tend to market generally because they are worried that they’ll limit themselves by focusing on one audience; they are worried that they will miss out on sales elsewhere. Marketing in this way, however, isn’t doing them any favours and they are often left with their tails between their legs, wondering why they’re not getting the return that they want.
So, how is marketing to one target audience better?
As we said, people ignore generalities. People are only interested in things that speak to them. If you tailor your marketing to their interests and needs, not only will they listen, but they will actively engage with it.
If you don’t believe that this will be effective, just think about horoscopes.
The ‘Horoscope Effect’
Whether you are into Horoscopes or not, stick with me here.
When you look at a list of horoscopes, where do your eyes automatically go?
Mine go to Capricorn because it’s my sign and then to Aries because that’s my wife’s…I bet yours go straight to your sign too.
Why? Because none of the other signs are relevant to you. I bet you don’t even read them or acknowledge they are there.
Horoscopes are the perfect metaphor for how selecting a specific target audience makes your marketing a success, or at least, it ensures that your marketing message reaches the right people and gets heard.
We look at our sign because we are attracted to things that are immediately applicable to us. Anything that we can identify with or relate to catches our attention and that’s exactly what marketing is supposed to do.
Imagine if horoscopes had all of the information for all of the signs mixed up in one big general paragraph? Would you bother reading it and ploughing through all of the information to get to the bits that were relevant to you?
No, I expect not. Who has time for that when there are an endless amount of far more attractive and interesting articles to read?
What horoscopes do is that they split the signs into individual paragraphs which, even with their generalised statements, are easy to navigate so that each audience can find the message that is relevant to them.
What about missing out on everyone else if my focus is so narrow?
You can market to everyone! You just need to focus on one audience at a time.
The big benefit of this one-audience-at-a-time approach is that you can really hone in on your audience’s needs; you can tailor your marketing message to address their specific challenges and problems and position yourself as the solution.
What this does is that it speaks directly to them. It makes them feel like you understand them, their sector or their industry and what they need.
Next time you find yourself falling into the trap of thinking that you have to market to as many people as possible, stop and think about the horoscope effect.
Is a general marketing message effective? Or will it have much more of an impact if it’s tailored to a specific audience?
You CAN actually market to everyone. It’s just a lot more successful when you segregate your markets and select one single market at a time to focus on.
Become a go-to-expert
As people are getting much better at filtering through information to find what they need, many tend to look for specialists to get the job done rather than a “Jack-of-all-trades.”
By using the “Horoscope Effect” in your marketing to address the specific needs of your target audience, not only will your message get heard but they will also listen and actively engage with it.
You will become the go-to-expert for that particular product or service and you can start building those all important relationships.
______________________________________________________________________
Andy uses this approach along with “The Client Journey stepping stones” with his coaching clients.
If you’re not clear on who your target audience is or you don’t how to reach them, get in touch with Andy. Not only can he help you segregate your markets, but he can also help you create an actionable plan to stand out, get your message heard and to get the results that you want.
Working with small to medium-sized businesses that want to get results, Andy can help you overcome feeling swamped in your business so that you no longer need to firefight through the days.
P: 01792 475149