Diversification is essential to any marketing plan. Focusing on just one campaign, technique, or demographic might yield success, but it is more likely to produce underwhelming results or simply fail.
As the old saying goes, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
A healthy marketing plan may involve several different campaigns. A good marketing plan might consist of:
- A demographically driven campaign
- A behaviorally driven campaign
- An organically driven campaign
Even if one segment of the plan underperforms, the others can pick up the slack.
In any case, the common feature of all marketing campaigns is lots and lots of copywriting. Marketing is a language-intensive business because humans communicate primarily through language. Hence, a content-driven component might be a tactic within each of the before mentioned campaign types.
Let’s examine four types of campaigns and see how each can help you with your marketing plan.
Content marketing is different than traditional product marketing efforts like sales collateral and other product-specific info. Content marketing includes things like educational articles, e-books, videos, entertainment, and webinars that answer specific questions people have and provide them with something they can’t get somewhere else. It’s the best way to turn your product, no matter how common, into something that is not like everyone else’s. – Content Marketing Institute
Diversifying your marketing plan with a demographically driven campaign
A demographically driven campaign targets a specific set of people: people you think will buy your product or service.
Such a campaign could take the form of sending out ink and paper via the USPS or email to potential clients and customers. For example, if you wish to sell baby clothes, it could make sense to target married adults in their 20s and 30s. But it would probably not be a good idea to mail 5,000 advertisements for baby clothes to single older adults living in retirement homes.
The main advantage of using a demographically driven campaign is that it can filter for relevant demographics, such as location, marital status, income, and homeownership. Want to speak to people with computers in their household or people who identify as pet lovers? Instead of wasting money sending out marketing materials to people who won’t read them, a demographically driven campaign saves money by targeting the people who might want your product.
Despite rumors of an early demise, direct mail is quite effective (the world’s digitization continues to expand) because people are more likely to open paper mail that they receive than they are to open cold emails.
The major drawback to demographically driven campaigns is that they require lots of information about the target demographic. It would help if you had the names and addresses of people to whom you send direct mail, for example.
Some demographics are easier to find data for than others. Because of HIPAA laws, if you offer medical services for a specific illness, it may be challenging to find a listing of people who need your service. On the other hand, if you are a high-end home theater store catering primarily to a local geographic footprint, finding data about your target demographic is easier. And if you are a pizzeria catering primarily to people in your neighborhood, you don’t need a list at all (ask us about tactics involving EDDM).
And in most DMA’s (designated marketing areas), consumers are migratory. Never assume a residential mailing list is more than eighty percent accurate. And, yes, it is mentally defeating when the envelopes marked “Addressee Unknown” or “Insufficient Address” begin returning to your mailbox.
There has also been pushback from the public in recent years against data-intensive demographic marketing, primarily online. People are wary of corporations tracking their online activities. These efforts have led to Apple’s latest iOS release making it possible for users to request that data tracking be turned off and making it more difficult to market to them. Other tech companies may follow suit. Time will tell if the trend continues. But for the moment, direct mail campaigns are still safe and highly effective when professionally designed and properly executed.
In any case, what you send matters at least as much as to whom you send it. Quality copywriting will grab a reader’s attention. Even if you send a campaign to 1,000 people who you know might buy your product, they will throw it in the trash if the message doesn’t grab their attention.
It is also essential to have a writer who is familiar with the demographic you target. That will allow the writer to focus on the demographic’s particular needs and pain points, incentivizing them to take action.
In the past, marketing focused solely on actions, such as web pages visited. This perspective was rudimentary and could only illustrate broad interests. Today, behavioral marketing makes it easier to target users based on the specific actions they’ve taken.
Diversifying your marketing plan with a behaviorally driven campaign
A behaviorally driven campaign is a campaign that targets people based on what they do or desire, not what they are.
An excellent example of this would be search engine marketing (SEM), most notably with Google AdWords or Bing Ads. With digital advertising, consumers are targeted by what they are searching for; they see ads for your product and service if and when they search for that product or service.
For example, if your business sells glow-in-the-dark running shoes, then your campaign’s ads will appear whenever someone searches for glow-in-the-dark running shoes. That person may or may not look like your typical customer, but that’s unimportant; they are a target because of the keywords used in their search.
The main advantage of a behaviorally driven campaign is that it gets the word out to interested people. People who are searching for your product are likely to buy your product. In this manner, you cannot determine they can afford your product or service but identify that they are interested in it. Behaviorally based and not demographically based.
A disadvantage to SEM, in particular, is that it can be competitive, so running search ads for your business could be pretty expensive if you have to compete with many other companies. Competitive industry sectors like plumbers and attorneys have a more significant ad cost burden.
And although niche businesses tend to have less competition and less cost, they also enjoy less search volume. Thus, a company selling glow-in-the-dark running shoes might pay less in marketing costs than a business that sells regular shoes but cannot expect a comparative result.
In any case, getting a potential customer to see the search engine ad is only half the battle. The copy for the ad needs to be well-written since it must catch the reader’s eye in a fraction of a second. And customers will expect the ad to lead to a well-written and engaging website landing page. Quality copywriting is a must for any behaviorally driven campaign.
More to follow
In part two of this article, we explore organic and inbound marketing tactics. We also have a fantastic offer to help your business get started with a content-driven marketing campaign. Stay tuned or become a subscriber. You’ll receive a notification when the second part is published.
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