Branding and marketing information for business professionals | Branding and Marketing

Do You Market to Your Target Market Before They Know You Know They Want Your Product?

by Chris Brown on Wednesday, February 29, 2012

As a marketer, I find this article on predictive target marketing extremely interesting. Identifying the best customers. Understanding why they buy and when. Finding others like them, before they are prime customers.

There’s nothing new about profiling your best customers, looking for others like them and making them an offer.

It gets dicey however when the company knows more than the consumer’s best friends. Or parents.

As a consumer, I’ve heard people say “It’s scary how much they know.”

But as analytical and strategic as Target is at predicting who is pregnant and when they’ll want certain products, I don’t think that Target is ahead of the curve.

If you disagree, how much do you think that Facebook or Google could predict about a person or a household? For many, many consumers, they have much more information that just some buying behavior!

Don’t believe me? Take a look at the ads that are served to you in those browers. Better yet, take a look at creating an ad and all the choices you’ll have of narrowing down your target advertising audience!

Using Google AdWords and Facebook ads, you can target key phrases that people look for or what they say on their friend’s walls. And in Google Gmail, the content of the emails is studied so that the correct ads can be served to the right target market.

It makes the predictive buying behavior of the Target studies seem much less like spying.

What do you think – as a marketer? and as a consumer?

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Use Quantcast to Learn the Demographics of the Readers of Your Website

by Chris Brown on Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Demographics of Branding and Marketing website last 90 days

Ever wonder who was visiting your website? Or a website where you were going to be placing a banner ad? I find it interesting to look at who is reading Branding & Marketing.

Take a look at Quantcast.com. Similar to Google Analytics, you past code into your site and you’ll be able to learn more about the number of visitors and page views, as well as the demographics of the visitors.

A special shout out to Danielle at Quantcast who let me know that my analytics were removed accidently when I updated my Thesis version. The latest version of Thesis is really smooth for updating the header in a blog, however it did not carry thru my code for Google Analytics or Quantcast. I appreciate her alert so I only lost a week of data.

So, dear reader, how do you compare to the “average” reader at Branding & Marketing? Are you a female making more than $150,000 between the ages of 18 and 54? Leave a comment and let me know.

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Are the 4 M’s of Your Marketing Well Defined?

by Chris Brown on Friday, February 17, 2012

The 4 M's of the marketing mix

In every entry level marketing class the 4 P’s of the marketing mix are always mentioned.

(Say it with me: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.)

However, I’ve found that the 4M’s of marketing make more sense in many business and organization’s marketing plans:

Market, Message, Media and Measurement

A well defined target market that your sales people know and love, your copywriter can picture and anyone who refers your products and services can recognize in an instant.
The well defined message statement describing why your potential customer wants to do business with your company in a repeatable, memorable, compelling way
A cost-effective way to communicate the message statement to the target market — communication media doesn’t have to be TV or newspapers. What about social media, signage, table tents, postcards or shopping cart ads? There are probably 2,000 different choices.
Knowledge is power when you know your marketing is effective. How do you know? By measuring the results over time, against prior results.

I was reminded of the 4 M’s this morning as I read business advice in the New York Times intended for small business owners about the 10 steps they should take to Diagnose What’s Wrong With Your Business. They only had 3 of my 4 M’s and mixed up the order, but there it was.

Marketing

1. Targeting. Do you have a strategy to reach your best potential customers with your sales and marketing efforts? A shotgun approach is too expensive and inefficient for any company, especially a small one. What percentage of the people you approach actually buy a product or service like yours?

2. Advertising and Public Relations. There are many choices for where to place an ad and how to execute a public relations campaign. The problem with many small businesses is that their marketing activities are driven primarily by which salespeople happen to call on them. Ineffective advertising or public relations can be not only a tremendous waste of money but a tremendous waste of opportunity. If you are doing things the same way you did them 10 years ago, you are probably getting less response.

3. The Message. Lots of companies still use this line: “We will exceed your expectations.” I even saw it on the back of an ambulance. (I don’t know about you, but I have pretty high expectations when I call an ambulance! Are the technicians going to give me a haircut after they bring me back to life?) It was a good line when someone first thought of it. Now, it is old. It is tired. It needs to retire. You need to exceed people’s expectations by coming up with your own line. Maybe it is not a line at all. Maybe it is a message. Whatever it is, it should say something about your company that means something to potential customers.

I’ve talked about the 4 M’s for a long time in Branding & Marketing, but I think it holds true today.