Making Your Propositions Reach The Right People
No matter how or how much the world changes, there is a simple but fundamental truth about marketing - you can't sell everything to everyone, every time. But the fact also is, that it is the one truth that marketers find the most difficult to stick to.
I mention this because the inability to accept the above reality can pretty much ruin the opportunity to reach the audience that matters to you - irrespective of how deep your marketing pocket runs. And the ability to target in a suitable way begins by well, knowing who it is that you are targeting. However, this part can be a difficult thing to get right, more so, if you are a start-up of some kind with little to no data about your potential customer.
The trick, especially for those early-stage companies, lies in knowing there isn't a right answer. The fact is most times new companies have only assumptions to begin their marketing exercise. But that is an entirely fair way to start - provided you know that one of the main outcomes of the campaign, besides the business numbers, is either validating or invalidating the assumptions you began with. I'd like to stress here again, from my own experience, that this is easier said than done. People running early-stage businesses can at times fall victim to analysis-paralysis - trying to benchmark the numbers to industry figures, drawing parallels, setting targets, evaluating, re-evaluating, and so on. Truth is, while your assumptions must indeed be based on some real-world logic, the thing to remember is that it isn't your data, so use it for what it is - a basis to create a hypothesis about your product, which will either be proven right or proven wrong.
Right, say you've done all the above. You have a very finely honed understanding of the target you are going after. Now it's relatively straightforward, isn't it? Just feed that target into the thousands of tools available and reach the people you want to. Well, I wouldn't be writing this if it were that simple, right? And it isn't that simple.
We certainly live in the age of quantification. There are measures, metrics and thresholds of all kinds and tools with varying USPs that will help you reach your kind of quantified demographics. Unfortunately, this is again where a seeming boon becomes a curse.
I've been in the marketing business for almost 18 years now, and I've seen first-hand the transition of the domain from a "gut-feel" thing to a world where it is entirely conducted in excel sheets and dashboards. I feel truly privileged that I was able to glimpse into both the soft and hard skills of turning out a successful marketing campaign. To begin with, let me say there is indeed much to be thankful for in the new order. I have seen the era of marketing where months of research, planning, design, etc - all came down to the conviction of a few, often just one man or woman. And while the successful ones were celebrated, in many cases also rather deservedly, this sort of operation had a dark "cover-your-ass" underbelly. The person taking the call was almost always the one with whom the buck stopped, literally speaking. This meant the collective intellects of whole teams were discouraged from thinking out of the box if it meant taking chances. This was undisputedly remedied in the new era of accountability - not just the brand teams could take more informed and backed-by-data decisions, but even the consulting agencies were answerable to the all-powerful numbers.
However, sadly, this meant the art of the soft touch, i.e., the mining of insights the way only a human mind can be lost to the computational power of analytical tools.
The answer, as it often does with most things, lies in the intersection of the old and new. No machine can learn enough to decrypt human behavior at a motivational level, at least not yet. But when used right, its artificial intelligence can be leveraged by a human one exceedingly effectively.
Here's an example of what I mean - in action.
One of the delightful ways of targeting customers with high intent for your product is Google search. That is because you will be able to reach people who are actively searching for solutions that you are offering. No market research of yore could get you this close. What's more, there are tools that can let you pinpoint the keywords perfectly and that's it – you are home!
The trouble is, so can your competition. And the third brand. And the fourth. All with the same amount of accuracy. So, what's the differential?
The difference lies in having an insight into the user's mind while he or she is typing for something in Google. For instance, if your product is selling car loans, Google and other tools can tell you how many people are typing in "cars under 15L" "cheap car loans" and the likes. But what if you did none of that and instead searched for the number of people looking for easier ways to buy bus or train passes - and sell them on buying a small car instead? Maybe this strategy fails miserably or maybe you've hit a goldmine - shooting your CTRs and Conversion rates exponentially.
Fact is the best tool for targeting and marketing in general, continues to be the human mind itself, however, now it can get valuable help from the one that thinks in zeros and ones, too
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