At this point in your career as a business person, have you already identified the prospects who are most likely to become good, profitable customers and the ones who will not? Do you specifically know why your customers decide to purchase from you as well as why prospects would approach you and purchase from you for the same reasons?
Just like in real life shooting, it is very important to identify your target before you start pointing your gun. Here are some of the benefits that you can get out of identifying your target:
- You can expect higher profitability from every customer
- You can sign more customers up with less sale proposals and calls
- You can spend less money and time on activities which may not work
- You can expect a higher ROI out of the money you spend on marketing and sales
Any type of marketing strategy can improve your overall revenue and foster greater exposure to more people, but targeting a specific audience can provide you with a better chance to reach an individual who may need your product or service. In order to drive the maximum profitability out of your marketing and sales efforts, it is very important to identify where to point your “gun”.
Marketing and sales efforts are extremely important for the health of any business. Identifying who your prospects are, as well as understanding what you can do well from the perspective of your customer can significantly reduce the money and time that you might have spent trying to impress prospects who may not likely purchase from you.
Social Media Marketing Strategy – The Two Approaches
When talking about social media marketing strategy, just as in any type of marketing, there are two very popular approaches that you can make good use of – the Shotgun and Rifle approaches. Of course, we are not talking about literally shooting here (though we all have that very “special” client…). However, the principles are very similar. In order to understand each approach, let’s look into each aspects one by one.
—Shotgun Marketing
A real shotgun shoots several shells over a specific area, hoping that at least one or some of them can hit the target. The term shotgun is even defined as being able to cover a wider range in an ineffective or haphazard way. In the business world, examples of shotgun marketing would include bulk mailings, cold calling, as well as advertising in large circulation in the online world. It also includes advertising with the use of banners on certain sites which often get huge quantities of random visitors as well as spam emails.
If your business offers professional services yet has not completely researched potential clients, your marketing may also have this kind of haphazard effect. It will be composed of scattering your area with direct mail campaigns, postcards, newspaper ads, as well as online advertising without really knowing if your targets are hit. Depending on the nature of your business, this can either be successful or no, and it can really get expensive.
With the shotgun approach, you can expect to get wider coverage. This can turn out to be good if you want to cover an area just to inform them of your existence. However, the drawback is that it can be expensive because you need to repeatedly do the process at least 10 times before your target remembers that you exist.
—Rifle Marketing
Real rifles bring their target into focus, enabling you to take very careful aim before you pull the trigger. If you already know your target audience and know them really well, it is highly possible for you to initiate marketing campaigns with a great deal of accuracy. Rifle marketing enables you to become more personalized when it comes to your marketing campaigns. You can even work on devising campaigns which are much better than just a simple letter or postcard.
For instance, in order to represent the amount of time or business that your prospects are wasting by not using your services, you can send your sales letter using a small trash can with a label. Make sure that you send something like this first class. Because of the creativity, your letter is more likely to be read than all of the other letters that arrive in the traditional way.
These innovative ideas for campaign do not only increase the opportunity in which your prospective clients will contact you, they can also tell a lot about you even before you manage to speak and begin a sales pitch. This will highlight to them that you are results-oriented and that you have the capability to think out of the box. Companies are searching for these types of individuals to work with their team.
If you are wondering which approach is better, you most likely will point to rifle marketing as better than the shotgun approach. However, the fact remains that the best fit for you depends on your personality as well as your target audience.
By its nature, shotgun marketing is less personalized as compared to rifle marketing. This campaign strategy may be good for business as it can create awareness. On the other hand, rifle marketing is only focused on getting results. Regardless of your preferences, keep in mind that you need to make sure your marketing campaign holds true to your personal style.
Things to Consider
There are two things that you can consider at this point. First, it is important to know your target audience, identifying who they are. Rifle marketing is perfect for businesses targeting a niche market. On the other hand, shotgun marketing works well if you are targeting a wider market, regardless of niche and specific demographic requirements. Second, it is important to identify where your potential audience is usually active. For this, you may perform surveys in your email newsletters or on your site or gather information from standard demographic sources such as census data.