How to encourage your target market

I’ve been talking to my daughter Josie about marketing and how products are sold to customers. She is very astute and keeps on referring back to my business. Her main question is: ‘Who, exactly, are your customers, Mum?’ and I’m afraid I had to hesitate! All the marketing advice out there says work out who your customers are and then build your business around them. I suppose I have to find potential customers to match each of my products (at least I’ve pruned those down in recent years) – not exactly the right way to go about it.

I can say I am looking for organisations who want to have information, publicity and promotional material in paper form using graphic design, eg membership organisations who would like to have a well designed newsletter or magazine to promote themselves to their existing and prospective audience, or small businesses who would like to have some paper marketing material to promote their services or products in a colourful and eye-catching form to their target market – but how do you say that in only a few words?

Josie and I have been Christmas shopping and one place she took me was the Build a Bear shop in the Oracle in Reading. A fascinating place as regards marketing goes – and I got Josie to try and analyse them for me. She was aware of the range of different bear skins to choose from, the fun idea of stuffing them yourself, going to a computer to name your bear and get a certificate for its ‘birthday’, and then choosing your outfit for your bear. She recognised the fact that the rich range of outfits would encourage bear-owners to come back ‘for more’, the upselling of other products in the form of accessories for your bear or finding a ‘companion’ for it, and the layout of the shop encouraged young prospects to enjoy their time there with bright colours, ample space and fun activities during their stay. When she asked me where were the same ideas in my business I realised I had a lot of thinking to do!

Obviously I can’t be the same as a bear shop, but I can make the process of visiting my website a more enjoyable experience. Why not offer an insight into graphic design, the different styles of paper marketing material, the potential of each commodity in relation to small businesses or organisations? I need to encourage my visitors to my website to ‘do’ something rather than just ‘surf’ and disappear, through offering freebie information packs and a well-written newsletter explaining and reminding its readers about my services. Undergoing research to find out more to impart to my readership, and to enhance my own experience and design work, will, of course, benefit everyone. What a positive way to look forward to the New Year!

Alice’s Action #2 – Keep Your Images Relevant

My daughter Josie commented recently on some leaflets: “Shouldn’t the picture be relevant to whoever picks it up, so to grab their attention?”

She’s right - aim the visual aspects of your advertising towards your target market. Don’t reflect your personal favourites and be careful about your business’s image. The customer is king (or queen) and everything should be geared towards them and their preferences.

Take a good look at the pictures in your marketing material, and get feedback from your friends or past customers, to see if they work or not.

Sign up for more Alice’s Actions from my website.

Is all junk mail bin-fodder?

More junk mail plops through my letterbox this morning, but two leaflets catch my eye:

One is promoting a furniture store – acres of brown background with tiny, indiscriminate photos that would require a magnifying glass to study what they contained in any detail, plus whited-out text in tiny letters crammed into the corners as if they are an afterthought and you’re not really meant to read them at all. The same hideous design continues inside the brochure, except that some pages have butterscotch backgrounds which means the white text blends in nicely and illegibly like cream. If there are any headlines I can’t see them, the benefits or incentives are non-existent, and the whole effect is a 1970s look which I haven’t decided is meant to be retro or terribly out of date.

Alternatively, the other leaflet is wild and whacky! It folds out into a cube-net (a cross of six squares) and each side provides a benefit/feature of the product, plus excellent pictures for recognition and tear-off discount vouchers for your next purchase. The images are simple, colourful and fill each square brilliantly, the main message is clearly put across with legible, concise text in a readable font, and because it’s different you want to explore the whole product to see what’s next or on the other side. There isn’t a beginning or end, but that doesn’t really matter, as the product is presented smack bang in the middle so you can’t miss it! The whole leaflet is just fun, and such a breath of fresh air!

Separating Subject Matter

I’m always collecting leaflets for research purposes. I had to get my spare tyre replaced (the car’s, not mine!), and while I waited, I noticed the literature the garage had on display. Two factors were brought to my attention: the first was a repeat of the concept stated in a previous blog about cluttered versus simple information, in this case tiny dense writing in wide columns compared with clear diagrams of tyres with appropriate explanations and guides.

The second concept was something I had learned from a recent marketing course, which had spawned from the idea of headings and well laid-out details beneath: separate topics presented on individual leaflets and displayed together as a set. This series of A5 glossy sheets were collated within a tiered-leaflet-holder, each exhibiting their subject in clear, concise and uncluttered terms using the corporate colours and corresponding imagery to best show off their contents. These were suitable both as a group or individually, as customers were able to choose which were the most useful to them.

This concept of separate leaflets enables you to focus on individual benefits for customers and how best to present your solutions in an easily digestible form. Appropriate incentives can then be displayed to entice the public in, each relevant to the subject concerned and updated on a regular basis. Jumbling them up into one 3-fold leaflet may not enable you to adequately get your message across, and is far less likely to get read and understood.