When evaluating the different advertising formats that are available to you, it’s important to define the best approach to reach your target audience. Agency representatives are quick to brag about “reach” and “impressions,” but their demographics can be misleading when taking your objectives and budget into consideration. 
Direct marketing guru, Karen Deis, feels that it is critically important to maximize your promotional dollars in an effort to have qualified customers call you first.
For example, if you’re targeting consumers who are considering a home purchase, then it makes more sense to utilize your local, freely distributed home-shopper magazine than your local newspaper, even if it costs more. The 100,000 people reading the newspaper are looking for news, and may not be looking for Real Estate at all. On the other hand, the 1,000 people reading the home-shopper magazine are specifically looking for homes. Focus as tightly as possible on your target audience and consider the following questions:
Are your clients:
- Restricted to your locale or geographic area?
- In a certain age group or gender?
- In a certain financial bracket?
- In a certain line of work?
- Recently married or divorced?
- Recently graduated or putting a child through college?
- Buying a car, a pet, or a new high-definition TV?
- New parents or new grandparents?
- Frequent patrons of other certain stores or businesses?
Brainstorm and be creative! You will probably find that you have multiple small niches, which could best be reached using non-traditional methods. Talk to other business owners about cooperative marketing campaigns. There are countless inexpensive ways to get your name out there…if you just know where to put it.
Call me to discuss some of the powerful cooperative campaigns I have used to generate business!
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