Targeted Marketing: What

Now that we have identified the right set of audience for our product, we move on to figure out the right message that will have the most impact. When we speak about the right message, it is not just the message that we broadcast while advertising for the product. It is the message that is part of every communication the company has with its customers, directly or indirectly. These communications can vary from a press release where the company defines its plans to go greener or a community participation where the company address the broader cause addressed by its products.

When trying to figure out the right message, we need to understand the things that influence the buying decision of the target audience set. One information that can help in doing so is the psychographic profile the customer. Psychographic profile is based on IAO variables (Interests, Attitudes and Opinions). It provides basic information about the target segment for our product. Using this kind of information, company can make sure it effectively communicates with its customers.

Another thing we should consider while we talk to the customers is the cultural code that links the product to the customer. Customers differ from each other. One such differentiation is cultural which is influenced by the society a person grows in. American culture is very much different from European and Asian. So when we plan the message to communicate to the customer, it should be adapted accordingly. Clotaire Rapaille explains the culture code for everything from shopping to love for America in his book The Culture Code. He briefly compares these cultural codes with the ones for France and Japan to show how different these cultures, and hence the codes, are from each other. Using these culture codes and going local with the marketing efforts can have a bigger impact on the target customers.

There’s no golden recipe to have an effective communication with the customer. The general pattern that derives one successful campaign after another is to focus on the customer, talk their language and feel their problems, or in other words focus on the customer more than the product.