6 Steps to Reach the Right Person with the Right Message at the Right Time

Solutions to help you grow…

Back in the day, mass marketing and advertising focused on Reach and Frequency. Reach is the total number of different people exposed to a message at least once and frequency meaning the number of times the target market sees or hears an ad.

Advertisers worried about the cost to reach a thousand members of the coveted Adult 25-54 market. Huge budgets were necessary to buy TV, radio and newspaper advertising.

Those were the days…if you were selling ads. But advertisers with small and medium-sized budgets were playing an expensive game of darts, hoping to hit the target.

With the communication opportunities available today, companies can focus on segmented target audiences that have the specific wants, needs, and characteristics of their ideal customers, right?

Not exactly.

True market segmentation is unfortunately not the norm. Companies do not drill down into their target markets enough and rarely define their ideal customer in detail. Instead of connecting with true prospects, organizations continue to throw darts and hope to reach more customers via broad online and offline advertising.

Shift the focus from Reach and Frequency to Connections and Relationships. This is not to say Relationship Building is a new thing. The opposite is true. Relationships have been key to business deals for centuries. What has changed is segmentation and a one-to-one focus are more possible than ever.

Here are five steps to help you reach the right person with the right message at the right time:

• Define your ideal customer and how they would use your product or service. What are their pain points? What solutions are they looking for? The more specifics, the better.
• Use this Ideal Customer Profile to create segmented target markets that you can drill down or “slice and dice” into distinct yet manageable groups.
• Analyze those target markets to gain an understanding of their wants, needs, and tastes, all of which change over time. Tweak your product or service based on what you learn.
• Make connections and communicate with current and potential customers when, where and how they want to. Use a mix of social media, direct marketing, and traditional media.
• Build long term, meaningful relationships via ongoing marketing touches based on their wants and needs. Give without always expecting to get.
• As technology continually improves, the way we do business changes. Yet the basic premise remains the same. Find out what the customer wants and give it to them when and where they want it at a price they’re willing to pay.

But now, instead of broadcasting your message to the masses and hoping it makes the desired impact, you can focus on making connections and building relationships with ideal customers.

David M. Mastovich, MBA, is the president of Massolutions, a Pittsburgh based Integrated Marketing firm that focuses on improving the bottom line for client companies through creative marketing, selling, messaging and customer experience enhancement.