Selecting an audience
For many years past, popular advertising logic has been: 'Print a metric ton of something and shotgun distribute.' This is appropriate for products or services which everyone can use, but is not efficient for many businesses or products. In the case of Expedited Transit Systems, Inc. they wish to advertise their fleet tracking system, but do not want to waste money pitching to businesses without a fleet!
Doug knows his business and it's clientelle. He doesn't need to be a marketing guru, he needs to know who he'd like to sell to and a sense of why they might buy from him. Given these things, we can help him target an appropriate interest group for his product.
We should explain that 'targeting' is a rude word for 'selecting potentially interested parties'. We're not shooting at them, we're pitching what is of likely interest and not blanketing the rest.
Create or obtain mailing-lists
Expedited Transit's own backyard: There is no better source of a mailing list than one you have collected over time. Doug's company has a customer database of physical addresses. His sales people also keep 'tickers' containing prospects who've shown interest, but have yet to purchase. We asked Doug to think about other places from which he could extract a list of people. Is there anything in (or about) that list which tells us more than their name and address?
When personalizing this promotion, the more information that is known about each prospect, the better. In the case of Doug's customer database, we find a purchase history and favored product line upon which to base an appropriate offer. It will also help us tweak the visual presentation of each person's offer if Doug decides to do that.
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Case Study
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Company:
Expedited Transit Systems, Inc.
Marketing:
Doug Sanborne
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Expedited Transit Systems is the manufacturer of a fleet tracking system. It is especially desirable to qualify their audience, since this is not a product that every company could use.
Learn more by following this example through the four stages of a selective, personalized sales campaign: Target, Produce, Sell and Refine.
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Cold call mailing lists: Some situations require new, purchased maling lists. There are numerous sources which offer some manner of selective mailing lists for purchase and some are even respectably accurate.
In addition to their customer database and ticker list, Doug's sales manager wants to pitch every manufacturer which resides in a certain geographic area. For this, we decide to purchase Chamber of Commerce data since its reasonably reliable and contains accurate geographical data. It also tells us the prospect's company size and other useful bits.
Second Stage Media only encourages the purchase of lists from reputable sources who undergo some manner of third-party privacy validation. |
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