Marketing Mistake #1

Failing to think from the audience perspective

Whether you’re a true marketing professional or a staff member who has simply been tasked with taking care of marketing (or a chief executive who has no marketing specialist but understands that someone must do marketing), the very first, critical step is to accept that fact that it’s the perspective of the audience that counts. It’s not about what sounds clever to you or makes sense to your staff. It’s about what your message needs to communicate to the specific audience you’re targeting for this campaign. Sometimes that's difficult, especially when you're on the inside, looking out.

How can you know what the audience’s perspective is? You can conduct research yourself, in either a sophisticated and extensive manner or as simply as your budget and time will allow, or you can pay someone else to conduct some audience research for you. What if this is an audience you’ve been marketing to for a long time? You feel you already know them pretty well. It’s still important to stop and reconsider your marketing goals from their perspective each time you target them for a particular action.

I believe a few very basic questions can put you in the right frame of mind to structure your campaign effectively and craft a message that will help you achieve your objectives:

1.     What does this audience need or want that my product or service can give them?

2.     What are the immediate objections this audience will have to purchasing my product or service?

3.     How can I address those objectives before they’re ever raised?

4.     Based on the answers to the three questions above, what are the key words and phrases that will best communicate my message to this audience?

A very simple, doable first step that can take you a long way down the road to successful marketing.

 Now, what marketing tips would you like to share here on Speakeasy? Let us here from you!