How Do You Target Your Ideal Customer?

Hello Medium 🙋

Robert Collier, said to be one of the old pioneers of copywriting, once said “always enter the conversation already occurring in the prospect’s mind.”

I am different to you and you are different to me, durrr.

The communication content, types, style etc l like will, of course, be different to what you like and vice-versa.

Nothing new.

But, I have to start this off with some obvious truths to setup the punch line later on….

There are 7.6 billion humans and the marketing industry has tried to pigeonhole those 7.6 billion people on things like:

• Geographic’s;
• Demographics
• Psychographics; and
• Behaviours.

Humans are vastly complex and complicated, far more than we currently understand, and attempting to describe 7.6 billion people based on those criteria is so rudimentary, it’s laughable.

There is no way those 4 categories can ever accurately encapsulate a human.

And even when you combine those segmentation criteria (and the sub-segmentation criteria, such as problem awareness, buying temperature and so on) with the need for multiple sales communications , in different modalities and lengths, you could end up with hundreds-of-billions of combinations of segments.

How could one ever list that many segments, practically?!

One way, with the help of machine learning, will get us closer: we’ll be able to track every behaviour and thought that occurred before a purchase happened and extrapolate that back in time to predict purchase behaviour and deliver the perfect sales communications at the perfect times. I think we will be able to do that for the entire human population at some point.

Artificial intelligence will likely be able to then create specific sales communications to match those billions of combinations of segments and deliver multiple specific sales communications customized to billions of individuals via distribution channels (of the future) at the snap-of-our-fingers/click of a button (or whatever the future equivalent is).

But, we are not there yet!

Regardless, what do virtually all brands do?

They create one sales message and distribute it to every segment that is somewhat related.

That is so far away from what Robert Collier wanted from us.

And it shows many brands have made no progress over the last 100 years from John Wanamaker’s dilemma:

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted: the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Well, about 10 years ago, I used to do B2B Biz Dev and you could actually target the single decision maker with LinkedIn Ads — by Company and Title, not by name.

The effect was the same.

LinkedIn took that feature away, but has recently brought it back.

That is a one-off example of being able to target a single person with a communication.

You can do similar with you owned channels, such as email, snail mail and phone too.

There is a middle ground that applies to all other channels:

1. Create communication around different awareness’s of problem, solution and product;
2. Translate it to different modalities and lengths;
3. Retrofit specific targeting messaging such as callouts; and
4. Distribute each version to the corresponding segment.

That’s a lot of work!

Yes and no…

Yes, if you were to do it for billions of segments and communications (hint: wait till machine learning and artificial intelligence can do it for you).

No, if your smart about how you tackle it.

Creation of communication around different awareness’s of problem, solution and product could be around:

1. Who has the problem?
2. What is the problem?;
3. What result do they want in the future?
4. What will happen if they don’t get that?;
5. Is there a solution?;
6. What are all the solutions?;
7. Why is your solution the best?;
8. Does your solution work?;
9. How does your solution work?;
10. Will your solution work for them?;
11. Do they see themselves as being someone who uses your solution?;
12. Will your solution cost too much time or effort for them?;
13. Can they get it solved faster with less effort?; and
14. So on…

Translation of that communication into modalities could include:

• Visual;
• Audible;
• Live;
• Canned;
• 1-to-many;
• 1-to-one;
• In-person;
• Remote; and
• So on…

Adding call-out messaging should link communication and modality of communication with segmentation criteria.

Now, recall, currently you only really have access to criteria such as geographic’s, demographics, psychographics and behaviours, so you may only have 100-or-so relevant segments in total, not billions, which ultimately is limited by the sophistication of current distribution channels.

Again, this middle ground is not ideal, but it’s way better than one message distributed to every segment!

And it gets you far closer to Robert Collier’s “Always enter the conversation already occurring in the prospect’s mind” ideal being realized!

The ultimate benefits is your prospects say “this is exactly what I need” and ad fatigue becomes non-existent.