Every experienced marketer knows that you cant quickly give up on a prospect just because they did not respond to your first marketing communication. Prospects are very busy with their own personal challenges and other pressing needs and issues. Your message is often just another ad that flashes in front of them without so much as a second glance. It is crucial to recognize that people aren't really thinking about your business or waiting for your message to arrive. More than likely, you are an intruder into their life and an interruption in their day. If you are lucky, they'll see your message and give about half their attention to it; let alone act on it. It is very difficult to get their attention and delivery your marketing message effectively. Consider this - it is estimated that the average person is bombarded by over 3,000 to 4,000 marketing messages everyday. Now thats clutter! Try this exercise to understand the extent of the clutter problem. Take one hour out of your typical day and count how many marketing images you are exposed to. This could be anything from a logo on a pair of shoes to the auto company nameplate on your car. Any image that any business enterprise has printed or broadcast to remind you of their offering is eligible. Also include any other entities such as churches, interest groups, schools, and non-profit organizations. Tally your count up after an hour, multiple it by twelve and see where you stand. The results will stagger you. This number will be much more dramatic if you did your survey in a shopping mall or retail district. Or, if you counted as you were driving down the highway with the radio on, its even more striking. There you were being targeted with audio ads as well as the visuals of billboards and logos on passing trucks. The problem with all this clutter is that your message can get lost in the market. You spent a lot of time and money on this message so it is too important to be ineffective. So how do you cut threw this mess to reach the buyer and affect their decision making process? It all begins with the approach and quality of your marketing message. Is it crystal clear to your target market exactly what you do, what you offer, and how it will benefit their lives? And how do you know its working? Try carefully crafting your message over time through a process of testing, measurement, and evaluation. Select the best of several approaches to your message and test them against each other to see which performs better. Then duplicate the results of the top performer across the rest of your marketing. Testing creates data that you can analyze and supplies you with the true response to your message. Most importantly, it takes intuition out of the process and bases your marketing on cold hard facts. Your marketing message is too critical to be left to intuition or the opinion of a few employees, family members, or friends. Your prospects and customers have the ultimate say on what they want to hear. So, let them tell you what will cut through the clutter to get their attention and lead to more sales. |
