That moment of revelation, when it all seems clear. Isn’t this exactly what we want our customers to feel when they choose our brand? Providing the solution to a problem or ‘need’ is what makes you competitive. More discussion about that in Branding. Understanding your customer is what makes it possible.
Targeting
Unless your offer is meaningful to a specific target audience, it won’t create an Ah Ha moment for them. A lot is talked about targeting but too superficially and without real consumer insight information. Often the need being fulfilled by a purchase bears little relationship to the product on offer. The classic example is the shopping spree to buy new clothes in the face of bulging wardrobes of barely worn outfits. The real need is usually much deeper – an attempt to deal with bordem or worse, depression.
A major mistake marketers make is to assume that products across different categories are not competing, when they are. Often householders will make choices between products in different categories as the need they are addressing is very broad. For example, the need to take some energy efficiency action in the face of the growing tide of information on the importance of reducing carbon emissions in the atmosphere. In this instance, many products may be competing – solar panels, solar hotwater, water tanks, water recycling and so on. There are ways to understand your target audience to allow you to reach them across categories and we’ll discuss these over the next few weeks.
Touch Point Reviews
A systematic way of evaluating the type of advertising you should conduct is to record all of the situations in the daily or weekly life of your target where they come in touch with your product or service or a need for such. Touch Point Reviews are a rigorous process of checking off the opportunities that exist to present a message or a call to action, or both. Online communications on mobile phones, ipads and pc’s plus their ability to multiply your impact, have added enormous opportunity to the traditional touch points of radio, outdoor signs, print newspapers, magazines, television, post mail and promotional items. We’ll discuss this further.