You Think Everyone Should See Your Ads? I Think You Should Slap Yourself…

Yes, I'll admit the "slap yourself" part of the title was more about getting you to keep reading than it was an attempt to get you to cause yourself physical harm, but only because it's really REALLY important that you get what I am going to say here.

The idea that getting your advertisements in front of as many pairs of eyes as possible is second only to the "getting your name out there" myth in terms of being the biggest WASTE of your advertising dollars.

Want me to explain?

Well, if you don't know the truth about "getting your name out there" you can read it in a previous article. The reason the idea of advertising to as many people as possible is killing your ad budget is because the more people an ad reaches, the more expensive it is to run. You are wasting your money by getting your ads in front of people who have no interest in what you are offering.

The goal is actually to get your (good) advertisement in front of as many people as possible who fit your clearly defined target market and are actively looking for your product or service. I know we haven't really covered how to narrow your target market yet, it's a fairly big topic so I won't go into a huge amount of detail today. The important thing for now is to understand that the broader you aim your ad the less effective it's going to be.

For example.

Let's say you are selling a product that helps people catch more fish… Would you aim your marketing at everyone because fish is food and everybody eats food, so everybody is a customer? Or do you think it would be better to narrow that down a bit and market to fly fishermen who are interested in catching more salmon?

It would be a mistake to say the first group is bigger so I should aim at them. First of all it would be very expensive to run an ad to the entire food eating population, (many of whom don't fish, or live anywhere near water) and secondly it would be so broad that no one would notice it. However it would be much less expensive to put your ad in a fly fishing magazine and the chances of reaching people who are interested in spending money on a fly fishing product for catching more salmon are greatly increased.

Okay, so now that we've covered that please promise me you will stop throwing your money away on ads that reach a whole lot of people who don't want what you are offering, and focus on the targeted group who want to give you money instead.