The Cost of Marketing to the Wrong Consumer, and How to Get It Right

Internet marketing is easy and cheap. That's all the more reason to use it judiciously, because the cost of marketing to the wrong retail customer can cost big. Here are some suggestions to make sure you’re targeting the right audiences. Effectively used, marketing has the power to connect the right consumers with brands and turn them into loyal, repeat customers. But what happens when it’s not, and what's the cost incurred? Bigger than you think — bad campaigns are deadly on a number of fronts. It’s not just lost sales. They result in lost loyalty and a confused target market. They can quickly alienate some of a retailer's most valuable potential and current customers. That leads to further difficulty attracting and maintaining relationships with the very people who could have been your best customers, brand ambassadors or social media amplifiers. Because it’s easier to reach out in today's digital environment, retailers can more easily connect with their client base now than ever before, for better or worse. Just because they can, doesn’t mean they should. It's very easy to try a new type of campaign or use digital tools like social media, but it's just as simple for poor planning and execution to lead to a negative result. With the rise of digital marketplaces and the vast increase in shopper options, the way shoppers buy products has drastically changed. This means that retailers must regularly adjust, refine and improve their approaches to marketing. It's critical to understand that just using the internet as a marketing tool isn't enough —it’s easy to market in a tone-deaf manner. As with any other campaign, success depends on careful planning during every stage of development and the judicious use of accurate, current data and relevant analytics tools. When marketers don't do this, they risk the consequences of directing their marketing initiatives at the wrong consumer. And there are far too many marketing strategies that don't lead to the generation of value or a customer transaction. What Sets Great Modern Marketing Campaigns Apart? It starts with careful and thoughtful direction of resources involves gathering data, collecting and securely storing it, and effectively using analytics tools to derive useful, actionable insights that form and bolster relationships. Drilling down, certain qualities of effective marketing campaigns set them apart from other, less-successful efforts. Here are a few of the most important concepts for reliable, powerful and positive results: Focus on a well-defined customer type: Great campaigns don't cast too wide a net. Instead, they have a clear idea of whom they're targeting. Don't worry about long-tail keywords: Unless your company can compete with the giants of your market segment — and giants of every segment, like Amazon — it's best not to put too much stock in these keywords. Emphasize qualified leads: A qualified, well-understood customer persona is much more than an email address. With a thoroughly developed customer profile, including data about budgeting and identity, companies have better results. This is one of many areas where powerful, effective analytics comes into play. Align large and small details to the defined personas: A strong campaign should feel relevant, attractive, focused and engaging to its recipients. Segment your database, continually: Building the difference between prospective and existing customers into targeted variations of the same campaign, for example, helps retailers realize the best results. Continually segmenting databases through the use of effective big data and analytics tools is one difference that sets retail leaders apart from the rest of the pack. Properly value existing customers: You already have a stronger relationship with existing and past customers than with potential ones. An incentive like a coupon or discount — with the exact terms defined in part through analytics and big data — is often enough to secure a new purchase. Gather feedback: Valuable intelligence about your products, customer service and brand experience comes from social media and many other online communities. Retailers need to be where their customers congregate online, then gather feedback for review by staff and use in automated analysis. Build emotional connections: Lasting, meaningful connections with core customers are more important than customer service in many instances. Building these relationships means encouraging purchasing over the long term. Consider these examples: Target determined it was too narrowly labeling bedding and toys for children based on gender. Taking changing attitudes about gender fluidity into account, the retailer stopped marketing based on gender. It now markets bedding and toys with a more inclusive strategy. Dick's Sporting Goods announced it would stop selling assault rifles and raise its minimum age for purchasing firearms to 21. CEO Edward Stack decided this would provide an overall benefit and strengthen bonds with customers throughout all of its product lines. A large part of the fine-tuning involves drawing on the power of data and analytics to ensure they can move at the speed of the modern consumer and connect to them effectively. Many aggressive, short-term campaigns use crowdsourcing, social media and apps to build strong, short-term connections. Carried out properly, these efforts increase positive sentiment among the customers you know are interested in shopping with your company. This turns the digital world into an invaluable public space in which businesses can interact with customers, using existing and custom-built tools to quickly and efficiently reach them. The costs of marketing to the wrong consumer are both clear and substantial. So focus on your current and prospective customers and leverage big data and analytics tools to market to the right ones.

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The Cost of Marketing to the Wrong Consumer, and How to Get It Right

Tim Lefkowicz

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Tim Lefkowicz