Water Your Market Wisely

Imagine you want to grow some plants but only have a limited supply of water.  Would you rather tend to about 10 buds, knowing they will be strong, or waste that water on 100 seeds with a hope they would all grow?  It makes sense to use that small amount of water on the smaller garden.  In marketing this is called targeting.

When your efforts are targeted, the results can exponentially multiply.  Instead of pouring impressions over a wide area of the masses, targeting reaches deep into the same market. It allows you to pinpoint your exact ideal customer. Targeting is like a laser that penetrates to specific ages, demographics, or specialties.  Traditional advertising is more like a fog light, with a broad reach that often wastes impressions on those not interested.

Recently, the Network Advertising Initiative conducted a study measuring the pricing and effectiveness of targeted advertising. It revealed that targeted advertising:

• Secured an average of 2.7 times as much revenue per ad as non-targeted traditional advertising.
• Twice as effective at converting users who click on the ads into buyers.

When your marketing is targeted, you can water your audience so that awareness increases.  And just as you would not water flowers once and expect increase, running a short term ad gives short term results at best.  A long term to the same people allows growth to occur naturally.  It allows you to achieve better results of name recognition overtime.  Each business has a limited supply of marketing dollars and those dollars can be better spent when they are used on reaching a specific client over and over again.  Use that water wisely!