Small Business Advertising That Targets Everyone Really Targets No One
One very important part of advertising is who you’re targeting. To look good to a specific audience, you need to make yourself stick out from your competition. Showing that you’ll go above and beyond your for your audience’s needs is also very important. There is sometimes a temptation in small business advertising and marketing to try to be everything to everyone. Too often, the end result of this type of “one size fits all” marketing approach is that the audience you are trying to reach can’t recognize that your product or service is specifically geared towards them.
Not all products or services are made for everyone equally. Advertising to those that aren’t interested is a waste of your advertising resources. A lot of small businesses make the mistake of thinking they have a larger target audience than they really do. A lot of small businesses rather than pointing their advertising towards a certain niche, try instead reaching customers that may want their product or service in the future. Although this approach can sometimes work for large corporations, because they have the enormous advertising budget to properly take on this type of effort, small businesses cannot possibly compete at this level. Effective advertising resources that could have reached a larger target audience and raised brand awareness are wasted using this approach.
When it comes to advertising, people are more interested in the direct benefits that apply to them. There’s a good chance of attracting them as customers if they are currently interested in a company’s product or service. Then again, people that aren’t interested will most likely ignore the advertisements. If you put a lot in trying to attract the uninterested group, then don’t expect a lot in return.
Small business advertising efforts are maximized by following the first step, identifying your target audience. The perfect customer is the one that would best benefit from your product or service. This customer would also be the one that you would most enjoy doing business with, and the one from whom you could profit the most. Although most targeted advertising is geared towards a niche, identifying and focusing upon this “ideal customer” can help small businesses put a face on their target audience, which will help determine the best advertising methods to use.
Take print advertising for example. Rather than advertising in a huge variety of magazines, your ads should focus and be fine-tuned towards specific types of magazines that best appeal to your audience. If you’re wanting to use direct mail advertising, then use demographics to target households and businesses that meet certain customer criteria. And when using internet marketing, you can fine-tune your advertising by creating various landing pages that target different types of audience.
By using this targeted marketing approach, small business advertising can be much more effective. It is possible to attract someone outside of your target audience with your advertising. But you’ve gotten a bigger chance of grabbing your ideal customer.

Posted March 20, 2010
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