How many times have you been stuck in a busy subway station or a party, and all that can be heard is the white noise of a crowd…
Then, all of a sudden, cutting through all the noise like a fart at a funeral, someone says your name – your ears perk up and you look around to see who’s talking about you…
You see, the average person today is exposed to 3,000+ advertising messages a day (compared to only 560 messages in 1971), and the problem is only getting worse…
“Everyone is trying to build a brand. This season, the networks have added one more minute of commercials per half-hour, and that is just the beginning. Have you seen the ads in golf holes (talk about hidden persuaders), in bathroom stalls, on grocery register receipts, and even in the sand on the beach?”
– Newspaper Association of America Website
In fact, consider this:
“Each of us sees more ads alone in one year than people of 50 years ago
saw in an entire lifetime.”
DMNews Magazine, 12-22-97
Over the course of a year, the average person encounters over 1,095,000 advertising messages… And YOU are expecting that, somehow, you have the one message people will pay attention to?
Is that a pipe dream, or can it be really possible for you?
Our brains are bombarded with noise, and as such, we’re programmed to tune most of the noise out… All but the “noise” that’s specifically relevant to us. Therein lies the secret for being heard.
However, most entrepreneurs design marketing programs that are plain vanilla. They send broadcasted emails, postcards, letters, and phone calls that are undifferentiated and not relevant to the majority of prospects…
Resulting in most of their marketing efforts getting ignored.
To make matters worse, an article in Time Magazine back in May 14, 2015 claimed:
In fact, researchers from Microsoft found that since the year 2000, the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds… This is a side effect of the “mobile revolution” (and it’s still developing).
We’re losing people’s attention…
And we’re paying more money for each customer.
For most people, this is bad news, right?
Well, for the average marketer, this has a potentially devastating effect – especially as the condition worsens…
Yet, for the strategic marketer, you stand to have an advantage for instantly propelling you as a leader in your market for a couple of reasons…
REASON #1: RELEVANT MESSAGES
Let me explain…
Many people claim “product launches are dead” (just like they’ve been saying print ads, email, radio, TV, etc. don’t work anymore).
And for many people, this is true…
The “reasons” are numerous – from “people know product launches are promotions and can see right though them” to “prices are too high.”
However, as my mentor told me:
“There are reasons and there are results,
the only thing that matters are the results.”
So, before we accepted these so-called “experts” proclaiming “truths” – we decided to base our judgment solely on our own results.
Years ago, we sent a memo to our clients that relevancy and specificity were going to be massive competitive advantages…
While most competitors ran product launches by sending out the same messages to the same people, we took it a step further and made the launch dynamic and relevant.
Using Infusionsoft, PlusThis, and a freelance coder, we nearly doubled our conversions, and over just a few months, we generated millions.
We segmented the lists according to:
- Purchase history (this tells us interests and desires)
- Email engagement (if they clicked the link in the email or not)
- Content consumption (if they watched 75% of the video or not)
- Offer awareness (if they saw the offer or not)
…Allowing us to speak to their interests and their behaviors.
This almost doubled our conversion rate, which of course means nearly doubling our sales.
In addition (depending on your offering), you can segment by geographics, psychographics, demographics, and behavior.
For example:
- BestBuy sent me an email during our frigid temperatures with a targeted offer for heating units (that’s segmentation by geographics).
- Extra Storage Space gathers information on their customers from the US Census, Google Adwords, and more to develop customer profile types – applying a simplified Myers-Briggs personality model to segment customer personas. Now they can tell who is “fast and logical” (makes quick decisions) versus the person who is “slow and emotional,” requiring more human connection and affirmation during the buying process. The communication is tailored directly to those needs. This is a form of segmentation by psychographics. (Source: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/case-studies/extra-space-storage-fuels-mobile-site-performance.html)
- Weight loss leaders TruthAboutAbs segments by demographics, with the visitor selecting their gender and being redirected to the most specific and relevant message for their needs.
- HubSpot sent me an email within 10 minutes of visiting their website – that’s segmentation by behavior (also, I believe HubSpot is another tool that offers you the ability to easily segment).
Why do these companies spend the time, effort, and expense to make this information available to them?
Because they are doing the things that:
- Their competitors aren’t doing
- Position their messages to be heard above their competition
- Create the greatest competitive advantage for dominating their market
This is what separates the people who “want massive success” from the people who “have massive success.” It’s all about being heard!
REASON #2: TARGETING
Unlike in years past, we have technology and advertising platforms offering us advanced targeting options for narrowing in like a sniper – putting our advertising messages precisely in front of our ideal customers.
Being heard isn’t necessarily easy, but we have more tools than ever…
…Allowing us to be more efficient and effective.
Between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Adwords, YouTube, etc. – all of these platforms focus intently on giving strategic marketers an advantage with:
- Interest targeting: interests, activities, skills, likes
- Behavioral/connection targeting: reach people who have a connection to your page, app, group, friend, or event
- Custom targeting: target based on email addresses, phone numbers, usernames, etc.
- Lookalike targeting: extend your custom audience using “lookalike audiences” of similar users
- Retargeting: reach only the people who have visited your website, page, or order form
Yes, this forces you to be strategic and stretch your skills…
And yes, being heard will pay off.
Aside from the usual channels, check out a few other alternative digital marketing networks that could boost your advertising campaigns (while costing you a lot less.)
Let’s face it, even back in 2015, 89% of business leaders believed this data “will revolutionize business operations in the same way the Internet
did.” (Source)
And they’re right.
Either you step up and do the stuff no one else is doing to build a preeminent foothold in the marketplace now… Or be left behind.
As Tony Robbins would say: “When is NOW a good time to do this?”
