Marketing to Everyone is Bad Strategy
Are you marketing to everyone? Maybe, at least if you’re new to marketing. The logic goes like this: there are lots of people who could use my stuff (product or service). I need to make money so I don’t want to miss ANY of them. If I market to everyone, more people will see my stuff and maybe buy. While marketing to everyone sounds like it might pay off, for almost all small businesses it really ends up being a waste of money. The most successful companies pick a niche, zeroing in on a very specific market.
When you market your business to everyone, is anyone listening? If you don’t have a specific customer or segment in mind, how do you know what they want? How do you know what will speak to them? By marketing to everyone, you have not identified a particular customer in mind. You haven’t sought to meet their particular needs because, instead, you are focused on making everyone happy. Your customers are a generalized mass of humanity with no relationship with your business because you have attempted to target everyone.
Here’s the truth: even huge brands pick specific types of customers to market to. They position themselves to appeal to a certain demographics and psychographics and craft their marketing messages to communicate their value to that specific market.
Instead of marketing to everyone, here’s what you should do: Identify the specific sort of people your product or service would help. Even if you think your product or service is for everyone, you need to pick somewhere to start. Who would benefit most from your product or service? What kind of people would get the most value from your product or service?
Research your customers’ buying habits. Where do they live? What do their lives look like? Are they busy raising a family, working in the city, vacationing in Myrtle Beach? What do they really want? Asking questions about your customers’ buying personalities will enable you to speak directly to them. You will need to create a marketing campaign based on each buying persona, but you won’t necessarily have to market to each one.
Be sure to communicate with your different target markets separately. Perhaps you are a Real Estate agent that sells both residential and commercial properties. By setting up your website with separate areas for commercial and residential properties, you are able to target both of those markets and speak to those audiences accordingly.
Marketing to everyone costs more money. You have no defined area to market to and end up marketing everywhere, thereby diluting your relationship with your customers. Parenting magazine doesn’t waste it’s time marketing to people without children because those people aren’t likely to purchase their magazine. When you focus on a particular target market, you can spend more money and time on people who are more likely to purchase your products.
Stop worrying about marketing to everyone. Instead, get started on target marketing. You’ll create a stronger bond with your customers, convert more leads into sales, and spend get more marketing buying power. By marketing to customers who actually need your product, you will create a stronger relationship with them and they will come back for more and likely create some word of mouth marketing for your business as well.
Do you need help honing in on your target market or picking your niche? Feel free to email me with your questions.
