Craft Marketing Campaigns With Your Target Audience In Mind

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What are the points that come to your mind when you’re tasked to craft a marketing plan?

Probably the campaign’s goals. That’s undoubtedly the most crucial point in any plan. Goals define how successful a plan is.

So, what’s next? Maybe message, medium or even creative ideas? … If that’s your answers, you have missed out the people who keep your job or business alive. Before your plan even started, you have already neglected your consumers – your campaign’s target audience.

Social Media Revolution

We’re experiencing the social media revolution. Marketers have never taken the Internet seriously until recent years. Back then, new age marketers titter traditional marketers for being outdated. And now, as I observed (and could be bias), traditional marketers are having the last laugh. Why? Because most digital marketers are obsessed with social media. Whenever a client needs to market a certain product, a typical obsessed digital marketing “guru” is quick to pull out Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and start blabbering how social media could change the world. He or she also probably uses a lot of vocabularies like “viral”, “buzz”, “free” and “easy”.

Their plans are always media centric. They often take the first step (towards planning a campaign) by selecting the digital platforms they deemed appropriate (Facebook, Twitter etc) rather than taking time to understand the campaign’s goals and target audience. The plan is often positioned to generate buzz mindlessly without understanding how it will help to achieve client’s goals. In a worse case scenario, because the brand, message, audience and strategy aren’t well defined and understood, a social media “viral” campaign could backfire and hurt the brand. Where does this happen most often? Answer: In an advertising agency that focuses solely on social platforms. They don’t have a choice and most won’t bother informing you if your target audience aren’t on social platforms. If they do, they would have lost a sale.

Back To Basics

Target audience… Again, it points back to basics. Analyze and understand your target audience through the 4Ps – product, promotion, place, price. Understanding what matters to your consumers would greatly improve your campaign effectiveness. Plan your campaign according to their behavior, need and want. If your research says social media is the way to go, at least you can hold your head high and inform your client with statistics and reasons backing your decision.