Tag Archives: Advertising

Identifying Your Target Audience

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Lacey Welborn
Lacey and her brother Zeb Welborn founded Welborn Media. She has designed and launched websites, several projects, marketing materials, a podcast, a book and more. Her passions include her family, her friends, creating things and helping businesses grow.
Latest posts by Lacey Welborn (see all)

Integral to any marketing plan is a clearly defined target audience. The target audience helps you determine your approach, your messaging, and your distribution. Read this article then download the free worksheet at the bottom of this post to help define your target audience.

A common mistake is targeting too broad a selection of people. We understand the desire to want everyone to know about your business, but it can get you into trouble.

Poor Marksmanship

When you have a broad message you are just another fish in the overcrowded sea of marketing messages. Your marketing needs to attract attention which is a difficult thing to do when every other business is aiming to do the same thing. So don’t dilute your marketing message. By narrowing your target market you can zero in on what would appeal specifically to those people and that will help you get noticed.

In addition to standing out, your message also has to resonate with viewers to have any hope of compelling the desired action and it’s much easier to determine what will resonate when you have a specific group of people.

The other problem is money. Your advertising dollars are precious. When utilized to their full potential you can maximize your return and experience terrific success. When you try to reach too many people much of your budget will go to waste on those who are least likely to convert.

Think about it as if you are selling your products or services in person and groups of people are walking by. You don’t have the option to approach everyone. So, you prioritize and try to engage the people who appear most similar to your current customers. You realize that if you put your efforts towards engaging those who appear less likely to use your products/services you will miss out on sales.

Buyer Personas

Many businesses need to develop a multi-faceted target audience. Maybe your business has different products and services to meet different people’s needs. This is a situation where creating buyer personas can be helpful.

We work with Scott Goodwin Associates (SGA), a company that provides training for firefighters. They have a handful products that meet different needs: entry level firefighter bootcamp for those who are interested in becoming a firefighter, promotional bootcamp for current firefighters who want a promotion, and training for individuals or entire departments to improve fire command and communication. Each of these products has a different buyer persona: the entry-level bootcamp skews to a younger audience, the promotional bootcamp we can narrow down by job title, and the training program targets everyone currently in the fire service.

The overall target audience includes everyone in the fire service and people who are looking to join the fire service. We can execute marketing pieces and aim to reach all of those people. We can also use the buyer personas to create specific marketing pieces that showcase an individual product and distribute it to only that segment of the target audience. We like to do some of both.

Hitting a Bullseye

Try to think of a specific person and cater your message to them. What are their needs, wants, fears and desires? What message will appeal directly to them? Determining that is the hard part. Once you know who this person is other decisions become easy.

How will you reach them?

You can target an audience based on several factors including location, gender, age, income level, job title, interests, search history, website visits, connections, current customer status, social media engagement, and more. Ask yourself where do these people spend their time? Do they search on Google, scroll through Facebook, or examine their junk mail? How do they make their purchasing decisions?

Traditional Marketing Methods often let you target based on location, gender, age and income level. Sometimes they also can be used to target a general interest. Digital marketing can give you more ways to refine your audience — things like job title, keyword searches, web history, specific interests, online behavior, and engagement level.

Define Your Target Audience

Now you have a good understanding of why defining your target audience is important and how it can help you determine your approach, messaging, and distribution. Download our Target Audience/Buyer Persona Worksheet to help you zero in on your target:

 

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Examine your customer base and think of one specific person who can act as an avatar to represent your typical customer or client. If you need to, create separate buyer personas that represent your different products or services.

Now that you understand your target audience, you’ve completed one of the most important parts of your marketing plan. Use the target audience to help you make decisions regarding the rest of your marketing plan including messaging, content strategy, distribution, budget and more.

Need help developing an online marketing plan for your business? Check out our limited offer: Zeb Welborn’s One-on-One 1-Day Marketing Plan

 

 

Social Media Strategies Vs. Tactics | Marketing Vs. Advertising

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Lacey Welborn
Lacey and her brother Zeb Welborn founded Welborn Media. She has designed and launched websites, several projects, marketing materials, a podcast, a book and more. Her passions include her family, her friends, creating things and helping businesses grow.
Latest posts by Lacey Welborn (see all)

Marketing vs. Advertising

Advertising: The paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by an identified sponsor; the non-personal presentation or promotion by a firm of its products to its existing and potential customers.

Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products.

When talking with business owners and decision makers we are constantly inundated with questions about ROI, or Return on Investment.  While platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google have attempted to address those concerns the fact remains that it is difficult to track the complete ROI benefits social media can bring to a business.  Advertising makes it very easy to track the ROI of a particular campaign because it’s a one-shot deal which can be easily tracked.  Marketing on the other hand is very difficult to assess because it encorporates the overall plan of a business to attract new customers.

Marketing is a strategy, and advertising is a tactic that can be an implementation of a marketing strategy. However, advertising does not usually work alone toward its goal. Other tactics such as market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement are implemented alongside advertising. All of these elements must not only work independently but they also must work together towards the bigger goal. A tactical executive may be very skilled at putting into motion plans to get results, but fail to see the bigger picture. That is why they may confuse advertising for marketing. Strategic executives will have a better grasp on bigger concepts, but may not understand the best way to reach their customers.

In Chet Holmes’ book, The Ultimate Sales Machine, he tells us there are three types of executives, “A full 90 percent are what I call ‘tactical executives,’ while 9 percent are what I’d call ‘strategic executives.’ And only 1 percent – the most effective executives – possess the rare combination of both tactical and strategic abilities.”

Ultimate Sales Machine, Three Types of Executives. 90% Tactical, 9% Strategic, 1% Both

Holmes goes on to say, “Tactical executives think only in terms of making the sale for today. They don’t understand strategy . . . Strategic executives will often look at the situation from a global perspective and see if they can develop some high-level strategy that might help to solve the problem. These executives are brilliant. They create concepts, ideas, and strategies that most would never adopt. But strategic executives are not good at, or interested in, tactics. Hence, I’ve seen many big ideas that never come to fruition because strategic executives fail in the implementation of their big ideas.”
How far ahead do you see?
The executive who thinks both tactically and strategically can develop the big ideas and the big strategies and also use discipline and determination to see those brilliant strategies implemented at the tactical level. And just for the record, the second type of executive, the strategist, can often be paired with a strong tactician and be very successful. However, the strategist may have to keep explaining and selling his or her ideas again and again to the tactical executive.”

Social media is most effective when it is used as a strategy and not a tactic.  While a social media campaign can include some tactics and advertising features, it is most successful when used as a tool to market to potential and current customers.  When done properly social media can have a profound impact on any business.

To use social media properly it is imperative to become a social business.

 

GM Still Loves Facebook

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Lacey Welborn
Lacey and her brother Zeb Welborn founded Welborn Media. She has designed and launched websites, several projects, marketing materials, a podcast, a book and more. Her passions include her family, her friends, creating things and helping businesses grow.
Latest posts by Lacey Welborn (see all)

General Motors Facebook

General Motor’s decision to end its $10 million Facebook advertising campaign is big news in the social
media world. Many skeptics have used GM’s decision to pull their advertising dollars from
Facebook as a way to attack the effectiveness of social media marketing for businesses.
However, these skeptics fail to recognize the difference between social media marketing and
social media advertising. GM still loves Facebook and recognizes the importance of social media marketing, but has
failed to recognize the correlation between the Facebook advertising feature and profits. GM’s
decision to pull money from Facebook advertising has nothing to do with the effectiveness of
Facebook as a social media marketing tool.

GM is still spending 30 million dollars on Facebook content promotion. Despite having ceased
paid ads on the site, the car-maker continues to make full use of the social network. Their
Facebook page remains very active with several posts every day. This includes links to articles
about their products and their partners, as well as more traditional advertisements.

GM Facebook Post After Pulling Facebook Ads

GM stopped using Facebook Ads, but will continue producing Facebook Content

GM has built their Facebook following to 345,000 people through Facebook advertising. The
massive following they now have allows them to stop using Facebook ads, because
their 345,000 Facebook followers act as a built-in referral network to bring more customers
to their Facebook page. Facebook page interaction will attract new followers on a consistent
basis without advertising because their followers can interact with the page and share it with
their friends. The more “likes” they get, the more exposure they get.

According to a Mashable article, GM issued the following statement: “We are reassessing our
advertising, but remain committed to an aggressive content strategy with all of our products and
brands, as it continues to be a very effective tool for engaging with our customers.”

Don’t let people convince you that Facebook is not a useful tool because GM has pulled its
advertising dollars from Facebook. Arguments can be made either way about the effectiveness
of Facebook advertising; however, it remains clear that Facebook content promotion is
highly effective to engaging with a captive audience. Many other companies, including car
manufactures, say they do not plan on pulling their Facebook ads any time soon. Experts agree
that the ads can be an important part of a marketing campaign, but it is important to implement a
complete strategy that interacts with its audience in ways that keep their attention after bringing
them in with an ad. As a Ford representative put it, “It’s all about the execution. Our Facebook
ads are effective when strategically combined with engaging content and innovation.”

GM’s decision to pull their money from Facebook advertising may also not just be because
of the effectiveness of Facebook, but of GM’s decision to cut massive amounts of advertising
expenditures. GM also made big news recently for stating that they intended not to purchase a
$3.8 million dollar Super Bowl ad this year. Leading many to believe the new Chief Marketing
Officer, Joel Ewanick is seeking ways to cut his expenditures and is not cutting his
advertising just from Facebook ads, but across the board.

As a marketing tool, Facebook has proven its effectiveness time and time again. The percentage
of companies using Facebook to expand is increasing every month and sees no signs of slowing
down. Those companies that do not adapt to social media are missing out on a large captive
audience. In an increasingly digital world, traditional methods of advertisement don’t have the
same pull they used to. However, Facebook still has a lot to learn in terms of figuring out the
marketing game and knowing what exactly it has to offer. As its products continue to evolve,
companies that want to use social media will have to continue to adapt. We highly encourage
any business to develop a Facebook page and use Facebook as a way to connect with current and
potential customers. Having a Facebook presence is a built-in referral network. Don’t miss out
on the opportunity.

The Value of a Like on Facebook

Posted on by
Zeb Welborn
The owner of Welborn Social Media and the founder of The Tutoring Solution.My goal is to help business owners share the passion they have for their business with as many potential customers as possible.By helping passionate people achieve their dreams I am helping to create a society of passionate leaders that will help inspire others to make their dreams a reality.
Latest posts by Zeb Welborn (see all)

The most common question I get from businesses is:  What is the Return on Investment (ROI) of Social Media?  Although ROI is difficult to calculate, there are numerous studies that demonstrate the value Social Media can bring to any company.

The Value of a Facebook “Like”

While perusing my LinkedIn account I came across an article titled, “The Value of a Facebook Fan.”  According to the article, SocialCode, an agency owned by the Washington Post Company “looked at 50 brands and more than 5 million Facebook ads over a five-month period earlier this year.”

What they discovered was:

  • Facebook fans are 547 percent more likely to perform a desirable act than non-fans.
  • Facebook fans are 291 percent more likely to engage with brand than non-fans.
  • Facebook fans make actual purchases at a rate of 7 percent, while non-fans make purchases at a rate of 2 percent.
  • The difference in cost per acquisition* between fans and non-fans is $9.56.
  • For fans making a purchase, the fan cost per acquisition is $14.88 compared to $43.86 for a non-fan.

The overall impact of Social Media undoubtedly benefits your business more substantially and for less cost than other forms of marketing and advertising.  The study by SocialCode is just one example of the thousands that can be found online indicating the benefits Social Media can bring to any business.

Sign up for a free, personalized consultation with Welborn Social Media owner, Zeb Welborn to discuss how we can improve your Social Media presence, meet more customers and enhance the relationship you have with current customers.

(909) 973 -9089

*Cost per Acquisition means how much it costs to convert a sale incorporating all marketing and advertising used to attract clients to a product.