Step 1 of Successful Marketing: Knowing Your Audience

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knowing marketing knowing your audience knowledge is powerEstablishing, but especially maintaining successful marketing strategies for your business continues to be a never-ending challenge for most.

Marketing is fundamentally an act of persuasion, right? So, what are the elements that are necessary to effectively achieve “persuasion”? The first step to successfully persuading an audience is knowing your audience. If you don’t have a good idea of the demographics and characteristics of who you’re speaking to, you won’t have any way of knowing how to version your content and strategies to best suit their interests.

How do you determine who your audience is?

You don’t necessarily need elaborate, in-depth market research to define the age, location, behaviors etc. of your target audience. Considering what products or services your business provides should be the first and most obvious step to noting what will appeal to your customers. Your branding should already align perfectly with your target audience, without much effort. You also must take into consideration the level of your products or business. Are you low cost, high value or luxury? That will make a big difference in how, where and what you market.  Once you have that idea in your mind, you must consider a few things about those people. Who are they? How old are they? What gender are they? Etc. Once again, this information should be obvious. From that, you can then easily determine what sorts of things appeal to them. Next step: Figure out what kind of information your audience is looking for and the best means to deliver it. Some questions you may ask yourself when determining content…
  • What do they use our products/services for?
  • What would they want to know about these products/services?
  • What are new or different ways they could utilize our business?
  • What questions do they want answered?
  • How can we improve their current situation with our business?
  • What can our business offer that people know little about?
  • What makes us unique compared to competitors?
Some questions you may ask yourself when deciding on delivery…
  • What does this group use to communicate?
  • Is my group on the web or social media?
  • If so– how old are they? This can determine which social media sites they are on.
  • Where would be the best place to advertise my business? Where does my audience go? When does my audience do certain things?
Once you answer those questions. Consider your branding and how it could be tailored to align with the daily activities, etc. of those you’re marketing to. Knowing your audience becomes especially crucial when stepping into the digital marketing era. Age and gender become a vital elements for this portion of your marketing plan to be fruitful. For example, if your audience is older, you may want to consider targeting your strategies towards sites that older generations are more likely to be on; such as Pinterest or Facebook. If your audience is younger, you may want to target more towards Twitter, Instagram and other emerging media. I see companies too often strongly pushing their content on media that their audience is likely unfamiliar with.  In addition, for older generations, they will look for different means of discovering information. They expect you to deliver to them all the information they could possibly need about your products or services. On the other hand, younger generations can discover these facts online easily. This generation would prefer that you teach them something new, show them new ways to use the products or tell them more about your company itself.  This also stands true for what type of business you are. Low cost, high quality or luxury. Luxury brands don’t have to say as much about themselves or their products because luxury brands usually sell themselves by simply being a luxury item. Low cost items need a lot more work to draw attention to and make people feel confident about the quality when purchasing. In addition, reflecting on which level your company falls into establishes which income level your customers are more likely to fall under. This is another crucial demographic when determining your marketing.  Even if you are selling a service rather than products, you should be able to distinguish which category your business would fall under. For example, the healthcare sector–completely unrelated to low cost, high quality or luxury, but the categories can still be easily applied. Healthcare is never “low cost”, but factoring in where you’re receiving the care, as well as the quality of the care can be applied to these three categories.  For low cost: I would see this as urgent cares, doc-in-a-box sort of businesses that can only provide a very basic level of care due to lack of a larger staff or complex equipment. High quality: free-standing physician offices and health centers; possibly even small, local hospitals where they obtain more equipment and more resources. Luxury: this would be prestigious, award winning research centers and major, reputable hospitals. All of these different kinds of centers are required to provide a certain level of care, but can be classified very differently–regardless of the fact they don’t actually sell any sort of product. Therefore, the marketing for each different kind of center would have to align with the cost, convince and quality of care you may receive at these various providers. Any type of business can and should be classified to help pinpoint what people are looking for when seeking out your type of business. What keywords they are typing in, what information they would like to have on hand or what your company can provide to fit their needs and income.  Knowing your audience and what they are looking for will better answer how you should market your business; while also allowing you to create a tone for all of your content that will align with what they find appealing. This knowledge will provide an edge for better SEO by utilizing keywords that your audience may use when searching out a product or service such as yours.  Truly knowing who you’re marketing to will allow your marketing to be as successful as possible because you will know when and how to best reach these people. 

Tips on How to Market to Millennials: From Millennials

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businessman-573024_1280Social, mobile and digital marketing have been hitting the top of the charts this year as the most effective means of finding and attracting new customers; leaving traditional marketing efforts in the old, timeworn dust of communications. 

Direct mail surprisingly transcends the age demographic. Younger consumers (18-34 year-old demographic) prefer to learn about marketing offers via postal mail, rather than online sources. (Source: ICOM)

Regardless if it is a website, mobile app, social media, online game or what have you; they are all immensely saturated by heaps of propaganda. Those of us in this targeted, upcoming generation who utilize these tools the most have essentially conditioned ourselves to ignore or simply not trust what companies are dumping all of their time, resources and marketing budgets into. Don’t get me wrong, some of it is effective and obtains the ability to catch our ever-multitasking eye, but I would find it fair to say a large majority of these ads are filtered into the “unknown” of the vexed minds of those who are most exposed to this bombardment.

I truly believe the well-educated and experienced marketing minds behind these strategies and initiatives on how to infiltrate the buying patterns of this generation actually know little about it. They identified us by looking through the glass; watching our habits and behaviors, but not actually focusing on our minds, experiences and how we are persuaded to buying into your products. We are a lot smarter than most perceive us. And yes, we love our mobile devices, Internet, social media etc., but that doesn’t mean we make our purchasing decisions based or influenced upon things we use for entertainment. This generation is stepping into it’s prime spending era. There are characteristics of this new group of individuals that make us exceptionally unique compared to previous generations. Here are a few for example:
  • A bulk of us went to/will go to college
  • We have a lot more debt than past generations (hello student loans)
  • We’ve postponed getting married/having children until we are more financially stable 
  • We experienced a recession
  • We have and 100% utilize the Internet (especially when making a purchase decision)
  • We have access to products and services world-wide, at our fingertips
  • We are extremely diverse
  • We care about causes; what companies stand for, what they support, the environment, personal growth and happiness
  • Quality and cost matters, a lot
The young consumer, or the ever-so-challenging “Millennial”, as it is often referred, is intelligent and well seasoned to the sensory overload of advertisements in today’s world. These particular consumers are also keen on what is spam and what is not, what is a deal and what is just a marketing tactic. (Ex. We all know the celebrity on the infomercial doesn’t likely use the product they are promoting.) Marketing isn’t as simple as it used to be because the young consumer isn’t easily fooled. We grew up with advertisements invading our favorite TV shows, magazines, billboards, social media and so on. We are truly the first generation to have faced every aspect of our lives being filled with some sort of propaganda. The goal of this blog was to convey my outlook on this “Millennial” generation and the idea that digital marketing is the way to get us to buy your products. As I began to write I thought, my peers are this generation. I want to know what they think. I want to know what makes them tick. I created a simple survey and posted it to my personal social accounts, inviting individuals in the “Millennial” age range (17ish-33ish) to take it so I could gather a group perspective. Here’s a little insight into the mind of this unpredictable consumer:

Q&A Results:

I received 68 responses total. The ages are as follows: (Click here to view the actual results) ‣16-21…..25% (17) ‣22-27….58.2% (40)          ‣28-32…..5.88% (4) ‣33+…….10.29% (7)

‣ You get a piece of mail from a pizza place. Are you likely to keep it to order from them or to know their hours/specials/menu without having to look it up?

Yes I’ll keep it to have this information when I need it………22.06% (15) I’ll look at it, but throw it away knowing I’ll look online if I want it……….55.88% (38) I probably won’t even look at it…………22.06% (15) Takeaway: Majority will at least look at your mailer, notice who you are and what you are, but won’t keep it. Hey, that’s a start. 

‣ What about an email from that same pizza company?

Yes, I’ll open and keep the email…….10.29% (7) I’ll look, but I won’t keep it…………….32.35% (22) I’ll delete it or never open it…………..57.35% (39) Takeaway: You may attract a little attention, but looking at an email on a screen and physically holding something in your hand is still incomparable  Likely though, you’ll just be deleted. Boom. Gone. 

‣ Are you more likely to open:

A. An email entitled “New Spring Collection from ABC Clothing” and look at it. B. Receive something in the mail with a photo of new, colorful spring clothes and actually open and look at it. Takeaway: Mail piece wins, again. I bet you’re a little surprised at this point. It’s harder to hold a visually striking piece of mail in your hand and not at least look at it than it is to hit delete or an “x” in your full inbox. 

‣ Do you pay attention to ads when browsing social media sites?

Yes, I notice them and the product/company
12.31% (8)
Sometimes notice them or the product/company
38.46% (25)
I’ll notice they are there, but won’t pay any attention to what they are
27.69% (18)
I’ve grown to not even notice they are there
21.54% (14)
Takeaway: This one is pretty diverse. You may get noticed, you may not. Likely though, people will notice something is there, but not what that something is or pay any attention to it. 

‣ Which of these options are you likely to do?

Screen Shot 2015-03-23 at 12.52.49 PM

‣ Comments: 

“dont look at them on my comeputer dont like ads really”

“I’ve got Adblock so I don’t even see ads”

Takeaway: Mail: you have a good chance of getting an open or a look. Email: much less of a chance. Your ads on social media: forget about it. Ads in print: notable. 

‣ How trustworthy do you find online ads that they are real or not viruses? How trustworthy do you find things that you get in the mail?

‣ Comments: 

“There’s too much risk to waste my time with it.”

“Quality of ad”

“when ads blink that much it just looks sketch”

“I’ve given my fair share of online ads leading to sites a chance and they almost always disappoint. The product is cheap or a scam.”

“My options of such ads are due to careful consumer ratings and reports on websites like Reddit. They have been reported as candid, undisclosing or even as false advertising on links associated with banners on Facebook.”

Takeaway: Online advertising is risky–viruses are a terrifying thing, really.  Things we get in the mail entail no risk to us. 

‣ Do you give companies an email you don’t actually use so you can avoid their junk?

Yes
23.88% (16)
No
23.88% (16)
Sometimes–depends on the company and if I want their stuff or not
52.24% (35)
Takeaway: I asked this because I almost always do this, depending on the company. It looks like others agree. In my opinion, the reasoning behind it is because companies just send too much. If they sent less, I’d be willing to give them an email I actually use. 

‣ Do you find this as “spammy”?

For the next question, I’ll be asking you if you see these things as “spammy” so when I say that, I mean it like…”in the past, the tactics that worked for Internet marketers were ‘in-your-face’ advertisements and spammy e-mails”. Basically, you see it as junk that you don’t want or you find it annoying and unhelpful.  Takeaway: We think your online efforts are spammy, annoying and we don’t want it. Your mail seems to be a lot less of a bother. 

‣ If you’re looking for something from a store, which would you use the most to least? (Most being 1, least being 3)​

Takeaway: I asked this out of curiosity. Website wins, of course. Mobile app in second, which I agree– they are super user friendly and fast. Catalog last. Could this be because no one ever sends me a catalog anymore? Except Nordstrom, which I ALWAYS look at; whereas, I don’t look at their emails, website, etc. 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So, suggestions?

digital, social, mobileMillennials have a hard time trusting or relating to online, mobile, digital or social advertising. We’ve been told since we were in middle school not to click on things because they are probably a dirty virus. We were kids once, we wanted to believe in the magical advertisements on the TV with products that worked miracles, only to have our dreams crushed by our parents enforcing that the products would never actually work like you saw on the commercial. We’ve been conditioned our entire lives against all of these tactics that used to be successful. To say it plain and straight–We don’t want your junk and we don’t want to be annoyed. So how do you grab the attention of this selfie, mobile device obsessed generation? A few things you should consider now that you know a little more about us…

‣ Make it personal. Emotionally relatable, inspirational. Make it fun, creative and humorous. Entertain us, don’t push us. Show us you care about us as people, not as something of monetary value. Keep up with current trends in entertainment, relate your products to things we actually enjoy. Interest me, please.

‣ Market your business itself. We don’t want to know about your 2015 sedan with 5-star safety ratings, we can find all of that out online. We want to know why we should choose your brand. What about your company itself appeals to us? Why should I give your company my money over the competitors that have a similar quality car? Who are you anyway? What do you stand for, who do you stand for? What attributes about your company or products appeal to someone like me? ‣ Make it relatable. Once again, I can find all the facts, figures and places you sell your product online. Teach me new ways I could use this product. Show me how I can use your product to quickly clean up the coffee I spilled all over myself and my car interior while rushing to work. Make it appeal to a diverse group of individuals. Show your product or service helping the sports fanatic athlete, the tattooed artsy hipster, the preppy pastel loving girl. I want to see how others could also use it. I want to know you care about more than just me. I want to see how it can also relate to those outside of my norm. If you want to appeal to the young consumer, you must make us trust, value and believe in your company. When that is achieved, we will hold you to a higher standard, have faith in your products, feel confident about giving you our hard earned money and most importantly: pay more attention to your ads because we will be seeking further information from you. The whole reason behind marketing your company or products is to be recognized and remembered. If you want to be remembered, be different. Be new, be exciting and take chances. This generation simply respects those who do something outside of the box, even if it isn’t perfect. We appreciate those who at least try to be different. We like to be entertained, not informed. Unlike past generations, we can inform ourselves through the Internet, so we are looking for more than just vanilla information.  Trust, legitimacy, the “do good” and a personal approach are the keys to unlocking the mind of this challenging consumer. Align these tips with your marketing goals and target audience and you will find success. 

Bigger is Better: Make an Impact on Any Budget

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Direct mail has unfortunately gained the reputation of being apart of the “prehistoric era” of traditional marketing, which may be true for those who aren’t steadily thinking outside the box. If products are created with differentiation in mind, they can make huge impact and deliver a definite ROI. The brain loves visuals. In fact, 90% of the information the brain receives is visual information. If you want to be noticed among the rest, your strategies need to begin by being visually different. Finding distinctive means of marketing doesn’t have to be a huge investment either; there are so many creative ways to stand out from your competitors–on any budget.

54.5% of U.S. Households read, looked at, or set aside for later reading, their letter-sized envelope direct mail pieces. For larger than letter size envelope mail, 67.2% did the same.

(Source: USPS “Household Diary Study,” 2012)

Take this product for example.

This is a #14 envelope which is the largest stock envelope that mails at letter Enveloperate. This product has the ability to receive more attention in the mail than your everyday envelope, but with little cost to you. This piece can mail at the same postage rate as the #10 envelope, but is proven to have a higher open rate–leading to a better return on investment and more attention to your business. Bigger really is better.  Inside this particular example, we have a visually striking, colorful letter head that we folded vertically. Why? Because it helps the product stand out at no additional cost. We then took it one small step further by including the laser die cut logo. This technique is truly unique, not done by many, gives us an edge to be remembered and puts us a cut above the rest. The true beauty of coming up with solutions like this one is that it is so simple, yet unconventional.  It doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive to differentiate yourself. Direct mail is still one of the most effective ways to market your business and will definitely be most successful when it is done with simple creativity in mind. 

Click here to see product image

Blogging for Business: How and Why–Made Simple

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why and how to start a company blog marketing blogging Blogs–What are they and how do we start one? We were asking ourselves the same questions and have found some simple answers. It seems every article regarding driving traffic to your website, best utilizing SEO or simply about attracting new customers and creating leads all immensely emphasize the importance of having a blog on your website. But how do you go about starting one? No one tells you that information. To be honest, having a company blog was something I was unfamiliar with and didn’t begin to know how to go about creating one. After deciding to dive in and finally move forward with creating this thing, I did extensive research on the “why, how, what and when” in regards to posting, content, optimization and the like. For those of you who are sailing in the same boat of uncertainty pertaining to blog creation, here are a few things I discovered. And yes, I want to “dumb” this information down to be understandable to everyone, not just the tech and digital savvy individual, because those are the type of people who already know how to create something like this, right?

Why create a blog? Isn’t your website enough?

The answer is no. A company website can only drive so much traffic. Search engines favor sites that are constantly being updated and are full of new content, images, videos and links. Everyone already knows for search engines to find your site, you have to employ Search Engine Optimization, aka SEO. There are two types of SEO you must use to make this happen, on-page and off-page optimization. To simplify what that means….
  • On-page optimization: Headers, titles, content–the actual sentences on your page, links, text within the links, title tags, your URL, image alt text, meta description and so on…Basically, just the stuff on your website. Simple as that.
  • Off-page optimization: In the most simple of terms, links on other webpages that drive traffic back to your site. This includes a link to your site being displayed on another party’s website or even others posting links to your site via social media. Having others driving traffic to your site will boost your rankings and put you higher on the search list, which is where everyone is fighting to be.
How does this pertain to blogging? Well, the big thing about having a blog is to drive more traffic to your website through searches consumers conduct on search engines. On-page optimization can be achieved when you’re writing and publishing your blog by using keywords in your content that search engines will seek out. Then, off-page optimization will occur when others sharing or posting about your blog via their website, blog or social media. Blogging allows you to expand your SEO efforts further than your website alone can reach, with little work on your part.

So, why put all this effort into it just to generate traffic that may or may not become leads?

Content and communication. That’s why. The point of this blog isn’t necessarily to attract customers to our products and services, but to share our knowledge and expertise, be able to communicate better and more often with our audience, become a place people can find information and be able to connect on a more personal or “alive” sort of feel. The content generated on a blog can be used for social media posts, which saves you the time of planning and creating posts that essentially lead the reader nowhere. Furthermore, this content can be used to keep your customers up-to-date with your current products and services, as well as a resource for information, news and trends. Communication is key to retaining and attracting new customers, therefore, making a blog is an essential part of your strategy.

Now you’re probably thinking, “Wow, great information, but how in the world do I go about starting one of these things?”

I began with research. There are tons of great articles on how to start a blog, how to do the whole SEO strategy, what to post about and how to share it. Now, just take that information and apply it to your business. Every business is extremely unique and your blog will have to be just as unique to align with your goals and branding.

Here are a few things I took into consideration before beginning this process:

  • BRAINSTORM! I did this the old school way–pen and paper, jotting down scatterbrained thoughts.
    • Consider these things:
      • What does your audience want to know more about?
      • What do you want to learn more about?
      • What kinds of things spark your interest (relating to your business)?
      • What do you want people to know about your business?
      • What sets you apart from the rest?
      • What questions can you answer others may not be able to?
      • What is the “tone” or “personality” of your business?
      • When people come to your site, what are they looking for?
      • What information is your website alone lacking?
      • What about your products or services do you want customers to know more about?
  • How much will we post? When companies shove unwanted information into inboxes and on social feeds 24/7, they may find themselves losing followers and likes. It might be effective for some, but I am a firm believer that the overload tactic doesn’t work well with today’s consumer. They may find your company annoying, rather than helpful.
    • Consider your audience
      • If you believe your audience is avidly seeking new information each and every day, you may want to post everyday or even multiple times a day.
      • If you view your audience as the type to occasionally browse the web and check social media semi-regularly, you may want to consider a lot less. You don’t want them to get back from not being online for a few days and have 40 blog posts they missed of yours that they have to (but realistically won’t) catch up on.
      • My advice: Test the waters. Don’t over-do and don’t under-do.
  • Domain for the blog: It is best to use your own website because that is where you want the traffic to be driven. If your URL is “abccompany.com” you want your blog to be “abcompany.com/blog” or something to that effect. We use WordPress, which includes a blogging platform, so that part was easy. There are tons of blogging platforms to choose from, so you need to research which is right for you. Some will let you create your own domain, others won’t.
  • Deciding who your blog will be: The personality of it. Your tone. Your attitude–personal feel or extremely informative. Light-hearted or serious. Jokes or no jokes. You get what I’m saying.
    • Once again, consider your audience. If your audience is seeking information on “how to fix a flat tire”, you may want to skip the jokes and personal touch and provide extremely straightforward, easy to read type of information. If your audience is looking up “how to start a blog” I feel this can be more personal. Make it feel welcoming, yet informative; sophisticated, but easy enough for anyone to understand.
      • Your tone will be completely unique to your business, your services and your audience. It will have to align with your branding, so make sure you think that one through.
company blog how and why to start a company blog blogging marketing

How do we get people to notice our new blog?

Sharing. Share everywhere. Social: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. You know the sites. Whatever your company uses, ensure your posts are being shared on these accounts. This will get followers to notice your blog and hopefully it will be shared beyond your reach via retweets, favorites, likes and etc. Using hashtags (these guys: #) are essential to direct users looking for your specific type of information directly to your posts. Keep these simple. If you don’t use social media, emailing a link to your blog, posting links to your blogs on forums or in comments sections of other blogs, sending people a text with a link or even telling people (customers, family, friends, colleagues, the guy in line by you at Starbucks, etc.) that you’ve created one should get at least a few people looking at your posts.

Takeaway: Creating a blog is a lot easier than it sounds. It doesn’t take much time, money or effort.

Although, it WILL:
  • Generate more traffic to your site
  • Inform others about your company
  • Assist in keeping fresh information on your site
  • Help you communicate on new levels
  • Establish a more “alive” feel to your site
  • Give you content to share on your social media accounts
  • Raise more awareness to your social media..More followers, RT’s, favorites, likes, etc.
If you don’t understand something in regards to blogging, Google it. There are so many articles, blog posts, forums and so on that will tell you anything you need to know, usually step-by-step. Stay hopeful, stay hungry for traffic and start writing.