Why Your Target Consumers Don't Hear You

I am frequently astounded by the regularity of poorly written creative briefs. There are likely multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is prioritizing speed of completion over quality of thought, but one of the most common elements I find to be subpar in a brief is the line typically titled “Target Consumer”.

If you have been in the business for any significant period of time chances are you have seen a brief with a Target Consumer description that looks something like this (I am using a female target for this example but it could just as easily be male):

Target Consumer
25 - 45 yrs old, Female, Upper Income, Upper Educated, with or without kids...

This is usually followed up with some generic “insight” that is supposed to provide depth into what makes this human being tic. You know, something like:

Insight
The challenge of trying to balance family, personal relationships, career and still find “me time” causes her to be time stretched. She is always looking for solutions that help her to balance these multiple pressures. She constantly puts others needs before hers, and is ok with that, but sometimes she just wants time to focus on herself.

The problem is the above example Target Consumer defines three quarters of the Earth. It essentially eliminates the male half of the planet and identifies an “insight” that impacts everyone but infants. Good luck trying to craft a message that will resonate with any subset of that target, let alone the entirety of it.

I think mass market brands find themselves working against these absurdly broad consumer definitions because they are afraid that in crafting programs that speak to the needs of a smaller subset of consumers, they might in turn alienate the consumers outside of that subset, and thus not deliver against the growth goals of the business which, being already highly developed, require widespread consumption to move the needle.

Aiming For the Bullseye
Often within these broad consumer descriptions we see the term “Bullseye Consumer”, which in theory is supposed to identify that smaller consumer subset, but in my experience really only helps to focus the media buy without actually impacting the point of view of the message.   

In thinking of the “Target” and “Bullseye” metaphors to describe the people we want to use our products we should consider that, much like the game of darts, when you aim for a target’s bullseye you often wind up hitting some of the bullseye’s surrounding rings, which in the consumer sense, makes up that broader target definition. Contrarily, when you simply aim to hit any part of the target, you can wind up missing it altogether.

I’ll use the sports category to exemplify that point. The people who make up the majority of Nike’s business are probably the casual athlete or the weekend warrior. However Nike doesn’t design shoes for the 5K run; they design them for marathons, because the casual athlete knows that if the shoe works for a 26 mile run it will most certainly suffice for a 5K. That is also why Nike ads depict elite athletes like Michael Jordan, and not some guy named Doug who plays in an intramural league whenever he can get out of work on time to make a game. In targeting the elite athlete in product, messaging and imagery they deliver a message that resonates with the casual athlete who makes up the majority of their business. The elite athlete is the lifestyle bullseye, but in aiming for it, you wind up hitting the casual athlete who makes up a larger portion of the overall target.

Is there risk in that by using product language and brand imagery that would appeal to a marathon runner you might turn off a casual 5K runner because they might get intimidated or feel like they can’t relate to a marathon runner’s needs - maybe. However, odds are that person probably wouldn’t have become a customer anyway, and I guarantee you that in alternatively trying to appeal to every person who runs, you will instead wind up with a watered down message that appeals to no one. Sometimes you have to be willing to turn some people off to your message in order to effectively speak to the people who will be most receptive to it.

The Misguided Rationale Behind Facebook "Likes"

The Need For A Paradigm Shift In Your Marketing Approach
If you follow Social Media and the conversations around it you will hear a common refrain that many, even most, brands/businesses are doing social media incorrectly. I believe there is a lot of truth in that statement and I think the underlying reason for that truth is that social media, really all digital media, requires a paradigm shift in the thinking behind how to build a brand vs. how marketers have traditionally used media vehicles to do so.

Since ages past the basic premise of marketing, in simplified terms, has been: define your target consumer, identify the media vehicles that consumer uses and craft your brand message so that it interrupts the content on those media vehicles and thus “reaches” your consumer. Over time as the types of available media expanded, the concept of “surrounding” your target consumer with your message, or of delivering an integrated message across different media types emerged, but the basic premise of reach and interruption remained unchanged.

The challenge with social and digital media is that the concepts of “reach” and “interruption” no longer hold true in the same manner as they do with more traditional media forms. The reason being is that in digital formats the consumer has infinitely more control over whether or not they wish to see your message. Yet many marketers still approach social and digital media through the same lens as they approach traditional media. They have not made the paradigm shift in thinking from reach based messaging to messaging that adds value to a community, which is what is required for effective digital programming. Facebook provides a convenient example to this point.

Facebook Example Of The Misguided Quest For Likes
In my experience most marketers approach their Facebook programming with the goal of gaining “likes”. Although “likes” can be a reasonable metric, unfortunately the motive behind acquiring “likes” is often to create as large a fan base as possible to deliver your marketing message to, or put another way, to create a large consumer population that you can easily reach with your ad message.

That rationale basically applies a traditional “reach” based approach to a social channel. However, the goal of putting your message in front of as many people as possible is not social, it is self serving, and doesn’t necessarily work in social channels.

Instead of thinking about how to acquire likes and thus expand your potential “reach”, you should be thinking about how you can develop something that people will want to discuss and share. The latter is a fundamentally different approach and necessitates the assumption that people are not automatically going to like your brand or message simply because you are on Facebook and saying something. Rather it requires you to think about how to earn their likes by creating content that provides genuine value to the people you want to follow your brand.

This thinking holds true for all types of social media vehicles, not just Facebook. Beyond evolving their approach to digital/social channels, marketers will also benefit from correctly defining their goals & adapting their message to the medium, both of which I will explore in future posts.

The Social Media Conundrum

I just finished reading the Forbes article - Marketers Have It Wrong: Forget Engagement, Consumers Want Simplicity, and in the article the author makes the argument that marketers are:

"...trying too hard to engage with consumers via social media, marketers are generally pushing out too much information, causing people to over-think purchase decisions and making them more likely to change their minds about a product"

The author also uses statistics to show there is a disparity between what marketers believe consumers want out of brands in social channels (to be part of a community) and what consumers actually want (to get discounts). 

This speaks to a point I made in an earlier blog post, The Danger In Forming Brand Relationships, that the relationship consumers want with a brand is based on three basic premises:

1.      Provide me a quality product that meets the need it promises to meet

2.      Provide it at a price that is competitive

3.      In some instances provide me with a self-image boost derived from the cache the brand provides

The challenge I have with the author is in his dispute of a popular marketing theory that the best way to engage people is via social media. My challenge is not so much with the dispute itself, as I do think there are other, non-social media tactics that are incredibly powerful in engaging people. Instead my dispute is with the fact that in providing a solution to the overly complex, message inundated dynamic that the author says marketers are creating, two of the three tactics he lists as solutions are social media tactics.

How can social media be both, not the most useful tactic to engage people with, and two-parts of the solution of how to better engage consumers?

The author's point of view highlights what I think is a common issue in social media; that many marketers and people in business have a only a surface level understanding of the depth of social media and how it should best be navigated. This in turns leads us to three errors:

1.      Marketers enter social channels with the wrong assumptions of what consumers want - e.g. They see people forming relationships with like-minded communities and assume that in turn those people want to form similar relationships with their brands

·      Dave Trott calls this phenomenon a Category Error and you can read his deeply insightful post about it here

2.      Marketers often view these communities as a way to deliver a message vs. a way to add value to them

3.      Marketers often enter social channels simply because they don't want to be left out vs. identifying the business goals they think social media will help them to achieve

It is not so much about marketers being wrong in thinking social media is an effective tactic to engage consumers with. Instead it is about marketers making the wrong assumptions about what consumers want from brands in social channels (it is value, and that doesn't necessarily mean discounts). To Mr. Trott's point - as marketers we are making a category error in how we approach social media.