Determining your exact target audience is crucial to the success of any marketing plan. Many businesses fail to do this. And, you hear a lot of them say things like, “target everyone”, and that never works. Trying to be all things to all people defeats the whole purpose of marketing, advertising or public relations.
Just a little market research can help you understand your own market, and how your product or service fits the market.
Let’s take tires for example. If you sell tires then anyone with a vehicle is your market, right? Well, not really. If someone just bought tires, trying to sell them new tires isn’t going to work very well. If they just bought a new car, they probably got some new ties with it. People who have damaged their tires or have worn out tires, those would be the ones you’re after.
We would also want to know some demographics of who buys tires. The fact that we don’t have the statistics handy gives us more reason to think about this group. Tires go on cars and trucks, so we’re going to use what we know to predict who the buyers are. Just common sense tells you it’s probably more men than women. It’s probably more fathers than mothers. It’s probably people who have owned their vehicles for a period of time, like 4 years, or 5 or 6.
As you can see, we’re beginning to identify and understand our target market, and who we need to advertise to in order to increase sales.
In healthcare, the principles are the same. Understanding the problem your product or services solves, then identifying the exact person who has that problem will ultimately drive your marketing and advertising efforts. The biggest problem with healthcare marketing is that people don’t really understand their problem.
So, what you need to do is stop thinking about what you know and think about what your customer or patient knows. What are they thinking? When they are walking around their house or office, what is going on inside their minds. For example, how many people are walking around telling themselves, “I need to find a neurosurgeon.” Versus, how many people are saying to themselves, “Man, my back hurts.”
Frankly, most people don’t even know what a neurosurgeon is, but they sure know when they have back pain or a really bad headache. You need to connect with your market based on their thoughts, not yours.
And, just from common knowledge, what can we determine about the demographics of people with back pain and headaches? I’m betting it is people over 40, or maybe 50. And, probably more men than women since men usually do more physical labor than women. Having said that, you also need to consider that women are typically the driving force of most healthcare decisions. They are the ones who push men to go to the doctor – a very important distinction when you’re considering who to market to.
So, common knowledge tells us we want to advertise to women over 40, and include all the information about what they, or the men around them are thinking. If you wrote a headline that says, “How is your husband\’s back?” you can target that group, and, it will appeal to women who are also experiencing back pain.
We like to form a question when devising a headline so the answer is in a list or in the body of your ad. This helps to engage the audience, but more on that next time.
