Keep Your Audience In Mind Every Step of the Way

By Alina Popescu on July 16th, 2008 in Business & Corporate, PR & Marketing, Tips & Tricks

If you want to create any kind of marketing literature, from personalized emails to brochures and flyers with samples attached to it, you must have a target in mind. That target is the public segment you want to address. That group of people needs to be properly selected and the message you want to convey needs to be build around their set of ideas, principles, likes and/or dislikes.

Now that you have your targeted audience and the envelopes you want to send out are ready, you need some contact details of real people matching the image of your prospect customer. Now, if you’re product is rather expensive and you want to select middle and top managers from local companies, that sounds like a great idea. But make sure they fit your initial profile! Having the money to buy your product is not enough :)

Let me introduce you to the real-life failure example that triggered this post. Vichy thought to send out samples of its newest products to all women managers in Bucharest (or maybe in other cities as well). So I got one of their nice envelops with nicely printed brochures and samples of a new foundation and cream. All nice up to now.

And the weird part kicks in: I AM 26!!! I really don’t need samples of a very effective anti-wrinkle product. Really! I might be worried about preventing wrinkles and fighting some small ones annoying me, but really, seeing the photo of a 50 something woman who’s in their main target won’t help make my mind about purchasing Vichy products! I’ll just think you’re not paying enough attention to what you’re doing or that those in your MK team handling this project suck. Or that you’ve selected a cheap subcontractor to get the contact details and that shows. If Vichy’s really, really lucky, I might give the samples to my mom. Then again, I might not.

The bottom line here: keep your audience in mind throughout every step of your marketing action. Just thinking of a great concept and writing the texts to suit your target won’t do much if you then get lost on the way and the message gets to someone who’s not even close to your intended public.

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This post has 6 comments

  • RennyBA
    July 17th, 2008

    Simple but true, I hope more marketing managers read your post and your whole blog for that matter. To often they are focused on their products and company and you know: what you are focused on, you get more of!

    I was also thinking: that goes for a good blog too: I would say: stick to your theme and focus on your audience.

  • Alina Popescu
    July 17th, 2008

    Hi Renny! You are right. All marketers and pr specialists should remember they need to be client oriented. What the media wants, what company wants, what would be cool for the product from a branding point of view, that’s absolutely worthless if it’s not based on what the clients demand.

    What exactly do you mean by theme? the design of the blog or the field you’re covering. If it’s the field, I agree. If it’s the design, having it changed once a year is actually pretty good for your audience.

  • RennyBA
    July 17th, 2008

    I meant the field or the subject, so I think we are totally agree.
    Like mine is about Norway and the Nordic countries, our culture, traditions and habits and that’s what my readers expect when they go to my Terella – even more: that’s why they comes back I think :-)

  • Alina Popescu
    July 17th, 2008

    Yes, we are on the same page :) An occasional story that’s a bit different might help at times, but I think blogs should try and focus for a narrower list of topics to cover. If there are plenty of topics, it’s better to separate them on different blogs. That’s why I run this blog and another one for travel and tourism topics.

  • janelle
    July 24th, 2008

    Hey Alina…great post..I recently subscribed to your site here and have really enjoyed reading your posts..I am a writer and I find that it is sometimes difficult to write with the audience in mind. Sometimes I have to remind myself to bring the focus back around because I’ll tend to want to spew out whatever I feel like versus what the readers want to see..

  • Alina Popescu
    July 24th, 2008

    Hi Janelle, thanks for stopping by. I’m also reading your blog through rss and have been doing so for a while :)

    We all loose focus at time. Smart messages are sometimes so cool to us, we get caught in the witty structure and forget what people actually need to be reading.

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