The good/better balance
Would you rather have one paying client or ten non-paying ones?
That’s really the question you should be asking yourself when you decide who to target with your marketing campaigns and yet you wouldn’t believe how many small business owners choose to go after the ten non-paying clients!
Allow us to explain.
Here are two population bubbles. That is, two different audiences of consumers that we can target with our direct mail marketing. Which one would you choose to market to?
Most people choose Population A because it seems bigger and they believe that it’s simply a numbers game. What they’ve forgotten to consider is the quality of those audiences, and what segment of each of them is actually a good group of customers for them to have. Just like trying to eat too much junk food, they may over-stuff themselves on something that provides little to no nutrients.
Instead, you have to think about the number of ideal buyers within that population. Aka, is it healthy? If you sell life insurance and everyone in Population A is a teenager or already has it, it most certainly is not, and you’ve just spent a lot of money marketing with no hope of return.
Let’s take a look at those same bubbles, but now with the segments of ideal customers highlighted in orange. Which would you choose now?
Seems pretty obvious right? By choosing the latter you stand a much higher chance of success. You’ll reach more people who are interested in your message. You’ll also achieve a much higher ROI because you’ll be wasting fewer of your postcards on the wrong people!
This is the point behind trying to target fewer good prospective customers over a large mass of them: You should prioritize having one paying customer than chasing after dozens of non-paying ones!
How can you incorporate this knowledge into your marketing?
Easy: Use technology to finely target your postcard campaigns!
Zeroing-in on ideal customers has never been easier, and there are four simple ways you can
do it:
- Select a Geographic Area: Using Google Maps data you can highlight and target homes or businesses within a specific geographic area. This is most useful for when you want to keep your job-sites tightly grouped for maximum efficiency and works well because generally, clients within the same areas and geographic regions will have similar buying habits. If you have one particular area that’s already been highly profitable, start with targeting just that one!
- Select a Customer Profile: Maybe your business is more nuanced than simple geography and you want to get inside the mind of your buyer and target not just people who look like them, but also people who think like them. Use Nielsen’s PRIZM technology to select customer profiles based on psychographic makeup: beliefs, interests, and socioeconomic class.
- Upload Your Own List: This option is much rarer and is for the savvy marketers who have been collecting contact information on existing or prospective customers. You can do segmentation on your own in Microsoft Excel and then set your postcard campaigns to target those individuals or households.
- Hire an Expert: There are a handful of marketing agencies out there who can help you combine the above options to come up with the killer targeted campaign. They bring a vast body of knowledge to the table that allows you to get hyper-specific. Engage with them and you can learn a lot!
Use this to pare your target audience down to just ideal customers whoever or wherever they are and you’ll see your ROI rocket through the roof! You’ll send less and accomplish more and that is the key to highly effective small business marketing.
So … what are you waiting for?
All of the options above are available through our web-to-print platform or by calling Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109 to enlist the help of an expert!
Do this right and you’ll be sending fewer messages for a higher return and the next time you hear someone talking about trying to reach the maximum audience, you’ll be able to spread these insights and save them from wasting their money!