With advancing technologies and a dizzying array of choices, identifying client personas that target buyer sweet spots can be challenging.
For companies considering their buyer personas, this issue prompts an important question: How do you address multiple audiences whose needs and wants may be radically different from one another? Do you find ways to appeal to all of them by shifting strategies, tactics and messaging? Or, do you prioritize your most important groups and appeal chiefly to them, even at the risk of losing others?
Modern communication channels afford companies the ability to address a variety of audiences with laser-focused messages. It’s akin to the comparison between network TV of old and today’s vast array of channels and topics.
When there were only a few TV networks, programmers and advertisers had to prioritize their audience wishes. Trendy messages appealing to younger audiences often ran headlong into more conservative, traditional messages targeting older groups.
Today, companies can appeal to any and all audiences by picking relevant channels and messaging to match.
One key challenge, however, is maintaining brand message integrity while appealing to often diverse audiences. Do you create an overall theme, with sub-themes that target narrowly focused groups? Do you attempt to find messaging sweet spots that appeal to a broad base? Or, do you develop totally different branding statements for each buyer profile?
Here are a few considerations to sort out around the important issue of developing client-customer personas:
Creative bandwidth. Think about all the moving parts of developing and deploying one or more messaging platforms. Will this be one overarching campaign, tweaked to appeal to various sub-groups? Will this be one size fits all? Will many platforms require creative development and then creative placement?
Cost. This addresses both creative and placement. Placement can be tricky, time-consuming and expensive, depending on the platforms. Broadcast advertising, for example, is more likely to eat up budget; while free organic SEO rank-building on social networks can be extremely costly time-wise.
Timing. How fast does this need to occur? If spreading the word chiefly via organic social media is the objective, and there are multiple platforms, prepare for a long wait from deployment to substantive results. In contrast, one messaging platform promoted only via traditional broadcast media may have virtually immediate results.
###
Mark Lusky, President, Mark Lusky Communications (aka The Happy Curmudgeon) is a veteran writer, storyteller and author, with 40+ years of public relations, advertising, marketing and journalism experience. READ BIO
happycurmudgeon.com 