Can’t Be Everything to Everyone

“If you market to everyone, you sell to no-one”.

Variations of this adage are older than the five P’s of marketing. It stems from a broader saying: “you cannot be everything to everyone”, which – unlike some maxims about apples and doctors – is well supported in marketing research.

This, of course, isn’t an argument against more prospects. Rather, it is an argument for focusing on the prospects with the most potential for conversion.

In small-marketing advertising, this concept is often set aside for the shiny goal of getting as many eyeballs as possible on our clients’ message. What could result is a newborn ad that barely caresses the attention of as many people as possible.

This isn’t because the ad creative is inherently boring, but the intro that tries to make the audience aware of their problem is boring to those who are already aware, and the grand finale that tries to close sales with a promotion is disingenuous to those who didn’t know this was something they needed in the first place. In the middle, the benefits to seniors and teens being listed simultaneously loses both demographics. “Know your audience” is much easier than “know your audiences”.

In a 2012 study from Stanford, ad targeting was found to have a stronger relationship with click results than any other factor, including ad creative. That means that crafting the ad message to appeal to the right ears is the biggest consideration we advertisers should have. If anything, we should be using language that only appeals to the right ears. Including less-likely-to-buy prospects isn’t worth the sacrifice of ideal customers losing interest.

So, how do we target using the ad creative? The most obvious way is by demographic & psychographic traits, penetrating the noise to get the ideal customer by using imagery and language that uniquely appeals to them. However, an ideal customer that is almost ready to buy is not the same as an ideal customer that is unaware that they have a problem that a solution exists for. The levels of awareness I learned are:

Unaware: someone who doesn’t know they have a problem. For example, someone who doesn’t know of the likelihood of termite-infestation on their property, so they aren’t aware of their need for prevention. This isn’t the same as someone who doesn’t have the problem, of course.

Problem-aware: someone who knows of their pain-point and is looking for a solution to fix it. For example, the someone who has found termites on their property and wants them gone.

Product-aware: someone who is aware of your solution for their problem and is considering it alongside others. For example, someone who knows of your pest-control service

Customer: someone who has chosen your product/service. At this stage, servicing the sale and providing support can garner loyalty for future sales.

The language required to pique the interest of each of these stages varies. Much more education is required to get an unaware audience on-board; education that would immediately disinterest a product-aware audience. “Did you know termites could feasting right under your feet” would immediately turn off someone who is already trying to deal with that problem. Meanwhile, when targeting problem-aware audiences, it’s all about presenting the solution as the best fit for their problem, which would disinterest unaware viewers because the problem isn’t something they know they have. A product-aware viewer just needs a clear reason to choose your camp over others, and something like a sale ad could do just that.

Different types of products have different levels of market awareness, too, since products that have been around longer require less education for their target audience, and more innovation. Figuring out which audience awareness level to target for a particular product takes careful thought and consideration as to where in the market the largest value lives and where the product is in its life cycle.

We’re all guilty of neglecting these principles sometimes. It’s not every day that we get the opportunity to make ads for each group we want to target in a campaign, so some generalizing is needed. However, even then, choosing to create one ad that is aimed straight for the heart of an ideal customer will convert more than a general ad that hits a bunch of people in the peripheries. If you market to everyone, you sell to no-one.

CV