Ready to promote a product or service, but not sure how to reach your target audience? Before you hit send on a huge mail blast, read on. KAYBE’s co-founder Kris Britton recently spoke to marketing whizz Toni Kent, in a KAYBE Talks episode, about the topic of marketing to everyone. Their conclusion? Marketing to everyone is marketing to no one. Here’s why, plus a few of the key takeaways from the episode.
Marketing to everyone means marketing to no one
When you go to promote a product or service, it’s so easy to consider sending your message out to everyone all at the same time. I mean, it’s quick. It’s simple. It means you have one message and one message alone. Mmmm…but that’s exactly where the problem lies. And this, in the long (or even short) run, will lead to you wasting precious time and effort.
In the podcast episode, Toni spoke about a software company she once worked at where this happened – and why things went very wrong. The company (which no longer exists) wanted to go big and tell absolutely everyone about their new solution. The problem, as Toni explained, was that, when sending out an enormous mailshot, they failed to take public holidays into account. The result: kids were off school at the time (and many parents away from the office), it was out of synch with public sector cycles, and to add insult to injury, the data wasn’t clean, meaning tonnes upon tonnes of mail was returned, unopened.
It was the perfect example of a campaign where the team was so excited to spew out their news to everybody that, in doing so, they actually ended up marketing to nobody.
Why hyper-personalisation matters: The big ABM boom
So, what’s the most effective alternative to simply shouting a generic message from the rooftops and hoping it resonates?
ABM – account-based marketing – has become big news recently, and is, effectively, pigeonholing your solution to fit a specific individual, to the point where you’re writing content that’s only ever intended to be read by the individual that you’re looking to sell to. It takes hyper-personalisation to the extreme. And this is exactly the kind of thing that works when you want to get the right people to your solution or product at the right time.
At KAYBE, we’ve come across many businesses who have previously put out campaigns that have fallen flat on their faces, and that’s because they have either used poor quality data, they haven’t segmented their audience, or they haven’t personalised any of their messaging. But a solid ABM approach will help you target the kinds of individuals you want to get in front of.
Should you ever send the same marketing message out to everyone?
During the podcast, Kris talked about the difference between general and hyper-targeted messaging, and broke it down to explain when it’s ok to use general messaging vs targeted messaging:
Instance 1: If you’re a business that goes out with the message, “We can look after your SEO for you and help you achieve great results online”, this is a general message that you can send to everyone.
Instance 2: Imagine a targeted marketing message that goes out to the marketing manager of a private hospital that says, “We can increase your patient enquiries through targeted online marketing.” This is the type of message that will make that marketing manager sit back and think, “this is a company that talks my language and knows what I want and need”.
In summary, you can market to everyone, but the issue is that most businesses do it the wrong way: i.e. they go out to market with a one message fits all attitude. My favourite quote from the episode came from Kris, who summarised this beautifully: “Unless it’s a scarf or a hat, it doesn’t fit all”. Wise words!
Marketing to everyone simply doesn’t work in many cases. After all, if you’re promoting feminine hygiene products to absolutely everyone, you’re immediately losing a huge portion of your audience. Whereas, if you show your target audience that you understand their needs, it’s a different story altogether.
Not marketing to everyone isn’t enough
It isn’t just a case of choosing to use account-based marketing, either. Even when you understand the principle, it all comes down to how well you execute it. This is where the real talent lies. Regardless of how much terminology, or how many acronyms you know, if you don’t execute it properly, it will end up being a waste of time and a wasted opportunity. There’s a lot to consider.
What different types of tactics make up account-based marketing?
Having a multichannel approach and adopting various different techniques is important if you want to reach your target audience. The hardest part, though, is that while you may know who you want to target, you likely don’t know anything else about that individual. This is where a sophisticated ABM-type solution comes in.
With the right tool, you’ll go beyond a standard persona and will actually find out what the individuals you’re looking to target actually want. It’s incredible just how deep you can actually go with ABM.
It’s about understanding your target audience in more detail. So, for instance, finding out which social channels they use, whether their account is still active, what groups they belong to and where they hang out online. If you’re marketing to them on a selected channel, but they stopped using it years ago, you’re flushing money down the toilet. You really need to drill down and understand them as best you can. That, of course, makes this a labour-intensive process, as it requires a LOT of research.
It’s also important that you connect to the individual at the right time, making sure not to rush in with the sales pitch at the first point of contact. Instead, it’s about nurturing them through content that’s relevant to them, gently bringing them into your sales cycle.
Want to know more about the power of hyper-personalisation? We have the perfect playbook just for you.
