Article

Leslie Alore
Leslie Alore 13 February 2015
Categories Technology

3 Tips For One-Size-Fits-Most Marketing

If this title caught your attention, you may be disappointed, but read on.

If you saw this title and thought to yourself "ooOoo that sounds great! How do I do that?" then I have two things to say to you:

  1. You will find this post disappointing because this is not an instruction guide for mediocre marketers, but I highly suggest you read on.
  2. To quote one of my favorite Disney movie characters, "BAD LLAMA!" You should never be excited at the prospect of One-Size-Fits-Most Marketing. That strategy is for losers. And if you disagree then I suggest you cry on the inside like a winner. (Ok, just kidding...but bonus points if you can name that movie).

I did promise to offer 3 tips for those interested in doing One-Size-Fits-Most Marketing, and here they are:

  1. Don’t do it.
  2. Don’t even think about it.
  3. If you’re doing it, or thinking about it....stop.

Unless you sell to a completely homogenous group of identical robots void of independent thought....If this is your buyer, by all means carry on.
For the rest of you, here is a word cloud that explains just a handful of reasons why One-Size-Fits-Most Marketing doesn’t work:*

Some of the words listed above are not only reasons why not to do One-Size-Fits-Most Marketing, but they are better, more strategic alternatives. The reason they’re both is because of that pesky word up there that says "competition."

I guarantee your competitors are using technology to execute personalized, targeted marketing programs. And if they are, and you’re not, they’re better than you. As a marketer, that’s not acceptable. We marketers must be better than our competition, just as the businesses we serve and the products we market must be.

It would be cruel of me to suggest what you should not do without making recommendations for what you should do instead, so...

3 Tips for NOT doing One-Size-Fits-Most Marketing

Personalize The Experience
Persona Definition + Content + Technology = Personalization
Whether your audience is engaging out in web-land, on your website, via email or through third party partners, if you can clearly define who your audience is and what the right message is for each of them there are technologies that can find and target them. To start, try using a content matrix to map your buyer to your content. Here’s how. Want to know more about how personalized content targeting works? This blog does a pretty good job of explaining it.

Don’t Put All Of Your Eggs In One Channel Basket
Just as one message does not suit all audiences, neither does one channel/tactic. The biggest trap marketers fall into is believing they can rely on email to reach their entire audience. This is a myth. And if you believe in it you’re probably missing a LOT of potentially great customers. No one channel can reach all, or even the majority, of your audience so you must extend your channel reach. Here’s an oldie but a goodie from Hubspot that talks more about multi-channel marketing (yes, 1 year is ’old’ in the high-tech marketing blog world).

React To Your Audience’s Reactions (AKA Trigger Marketing)
If you got engaged in the era of facebook and made your new relationship status ’facebook official’ then you no doubt found yourself being presented with ads touting all manner of wedding paraphernalia. Happy coincidence? Nope. That’s smart, timely, trigger-based marketing. The web is flush with info about each and every one of us, and smart marketers use this information to trigger personalized content (ref: tip #1). It’s the same principle that Amazon and Netflix employ when they present you with those nifty suggestions that say "if you liked X, then you may like Y and Z." You can apply this to all sorts of things, such as content consumption, to help you offer up the right message at the right time via the right channels (ref: tip #2). Here’s a good resource from Eloqua to help get you thinking about some trigger-based programs that may be of value to your business.

And finally, I leave you with this:

And old classic:

“Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client.” ~ David Olgilvy

Combined with modern insight:

"Innovation needs to be part of your culture. Consumers are transforming faster than we are, and if we don’t catch up, we’re in trouble." ~Ian Schafer

Together these show that some marketing principles never die...they just evolve, as must we all.

* I created this lovely word cloud using a nifty web tool called Wordle.

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