Aug17
When asked about the secrets to his success, the ever-quotable Ted Turner replied, “Early to bed, early to rise. Work like hell and advertise.” With due respect to the media mogul—and with a nod to healthy habits and hard work—small businesses who follow this advice today with fail.
Why?
Because advertising today is not what it was a few decades ago when Ted Turner launched his empire.
In the 1970’s the average American consumer was exposed to 500 marketing messages a day. Today that number is 3,500. Yes, the average American consumer is assaulted with 3,500 marketing messages a day. That’s one every 24 seconds, or 1.25 million marketing messages a year.
In other words, the brutal reality for small businesses today is that they could spend thousands and thousands of their hard-earned dollars on advertising that NEVER connects with their customers and prospects. And many do, advertising themselves into bankruptcy.
What’s the answer? Targeting.
Targeting means knowing exactly who to reach with your marketing message and exactly how to reach them. Targeting means, instead of shooting lots of advertising arrows into the air, shooting a few arrows aimed directly at the bull’s eye.
In short, targeting is narrowcasting instead of broadcasting.
This doesn’t mean that you stop using traditional marketing mediums. Certain media outlets may speak directly to your core customer, and that’s exactly what you want to do. Just don’t use traditional marketing mediums in traditional ways.
Select the marketing mediums that are the best match for your core customer and dominate those mediums. In other words, don’t pour one inch of water in ten advertising glasses, fill two or three glasses to overflowing. And use these mediums to spark a conversation. Create dialogue, not the shrill monologue that dominates advertising today. Then continue that conversation online at your Facebook fans page or blog, or face to face at your physical location or community event.
Finally targeting means telling the truth. After decades of slick advertising campaigns, the average consumer is deeply distrustful of marketing and promotions. So we must take the time to build a real relationship with our customers where they begin to know, like, and trust us so they may, in time, try, buy, and refer us to their friends.
Apr20
Kim Taylor at The Retreat Day Spa and Salon is one of my small business consulting clients. Over the last year Kim has gone from not having a Facebook Fan page at all to—at this writing—more than 1,100 fans. With robust daily activity and a passionate fan base, Facebook has become Kim’s number one marketing medium.
Kim, what do you do each week on your Facebook Fans page?
Our fans page is about interaction, not selling stuff. So I post three conversation starters each week and interact with the responses.
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Apr 6
Social media anxiety. Not yet a diagnosed medical condition, it’s gripping many otherwise temperate business owners. It comes from the relentless drone from marketers to media-types saying that if you own any kind of business, you should be in Social Media. Yet, you aren’t. And the heart palpitations begin.
But does that mean you should jump in and do it? Nope.
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Mar16
It’s a question I’m often asked by my clients as we’re discussing social media, “What’s better Facebook or Linkedin?” Perhaps you’ve pondered the answer to that question as well. Here’s some food for thought.
As of this writing Facebook has 400 million active users and 50% of them login on any given day. More than 1.5 million local businesses have active fan pages on Facebook and 20 million people become fans of these pages each day. Business fan pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans according to Facebook’s self-published demographics
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Mar 9
A friend of mine recently wrote an online review for a restaurant that just opened in the city where I live. It wasn’t a bad review. He simply mentioned, in a gracious way, some good things about the restaurant and some areas for improvement. I read the review. It was thoughtful, accurate, and even-handed.
Then a firestorm erupted.
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— Carlos Carney · Aug 18, 05:01 AM
This is a perfect example of what NOT to do in advertising today, broadcasting versus narrowcasting. I have no idea who this person is and no relationship with him. My blog was spammed with his comment—an SEO advertisement—without any interaction with the content. This is the Internet’s version of a television commercial that interrupts a program, and it’s just irritating. I would have deleted his comment, but it supplies such a great example, again, of what NOT to do. What do you do? Build relationships, interact with people in authentic ways, and let trust grow. This is the the key to advertising today!
— Bill Zipp · Aug 18, 09:41 AM
Great advice! The struggle my clients are having is choosing which medium targets their customer the best. I spoke with a Corvallis car dealer yesterday and he said he gets at least 5 people A DAY trying to sell him advertising. No one has time to evaluate that kind of volume.
— Carol Schaudt · Aug 27, 10:53 AM