Toilet Paper and Toothbrushes

The economy has affected every company, small and large thus eliciting people that need to implement marketing strategies that actually work.  What a concept!  We witness many attempts that completely miss the target market market boat.  It has become a fun and entertaining game for my wife and I to watch commercials that we evaluate as to their effectiveness with message, images and target market.  The best part of this fun marketing evaluation exercise is to really see how some company's total miss the mark.

Having spent well over a decade consulting with all types of businesses in almost every industry, one of the first questions I always ask is, "Who is your target market?".  Typical answers to this question follow in these categories, if a large company who has been around a while and has the money for research comes back with a data sheet like a CIA profile report - this is very scary because most of the time interpreting this data into marketing plans becomes a grid iron of debate amongst the agency's that serve the brand.  Next you have the company that says,  "we kinda know who it is and that has worked for 20 years".  Really?  Then you have the new start-up or entrepreneur that says the greatest answer of them all, "Everybody!". 

Sorry to burst the bubble but only .0000001 percent of businesses have a truly defined target market of everybody.* And of those .0000001 maybe 1 can say this and that would be mother earth.  If your brand sells Toilet paper or Toothbrushes in a non-third world country that the majority of the population uses these items then for that region you can claim "everybody" as your target market. 

Finding your target market is like fishing.

A good fisherman does their research before finding the right place to cast their lines.  This includes knowing when the fish are going to be at the place, where the best place is, what type of gear to use and how to use the gear efficiently. 

So before going out and spending money on advertising, think like a fisherman. 

*Completely made up data but might actually be close to accurate.