Targeting is one of the most important parts of small business advertising. It’s important to stand out from your competition, especially when trying to appeal to a specific audience. You also need to prove that you’re more than capable to fill your target audiences needs. There is sometimes a temptation in small business advertising and marketing to try to be everything to everyone. Too often, the end result of this type of “one size fits all” marketing approach is that the audience you are trying to reach can’t recognize that your product or service is specifically geared towards them.
A lot of products and services are not made for everyone equally. It’s a waste of valuable advertising resources to advertise to people that aren’t interested in your product. A lot of small businesses make the mistake of thinking they have a larger target audience than they really do. A lot of small businesses rather than pointing their advertising towards a certain niche, try instead reaching customers that may want their product or service in the future. Thanks to extremely high advertising budgets, big corporations can often have this approach work for them, but for small business it’s too high of a risk. Advertising resources are less effective by not raising brand awareness with your target audience.
When it comes to advertising, people are more interested in the direct benefits that apply to them. If they are currently interested in a certain type of product or service, there is a good chance of attracting them as a customer. And of course, those that aren’t interested will simply ignore the advertisements. If you spend your advertising funds on trying to attract the second group, then you’re throwing away your money.
In order to maximize small business advertising efforts, the first step is identifying the ideal customer. The perfect customer is the one that would best benefit from your product or service. They are the customers that your enjoy working for, and that bring in the most profit. Finding out your “ideal customer” not only puts a face on your target audience, but it also helps you find out what method to use in your advertising, even though most advertising is aimed towards a specific niche.
For example, instead of advertising in all the magazines that are available, your ads should go towards specific magazines and be fine-tuned towards your audience in an area that most appeals to them. If you’re wanting to use direct mail advertising, then use demographics to target households and businesses that meet certain customer criteria. You can even develop certain landing pages that target different types of audience when using internet marketing.
If you use this targeted marketing approach, your small business advertising can be a lot more effective. Of course, there’s still a chance that those outside your target audience will notice your advertisements and take action occasionally. But there’s a much bigger chance of attracting your ideal, targeted customer.