There is one TV commercial that came on during the holidays that drove my son crazy. It involved 2 parents jumping out of bed and dashing down the stairs screaming in excitement because a specific catalogue had been delivered to their home.
My son despises this commercial, with a passion almost unseemly for a child so young. Whenever this commercial comes on, even if he’s not in the room, he runs over to the TV, says “those people stupid (a word he himself will tell you is “inappropriate”), and promptly turns the TV off. He apparently feels just a little disgusted or annoyed by the behaviour of these characters.
Generally, I’ve found when a brand is marketing to a very wide audience, the promotion tends to get “dumbed down” so it can reach the broadest possible demographic. No business wants to spend money promoting a message that the target market doesn’t understand. However, sometimes this lack of targeting can be counterproductive, as part of the audience may be turned off or even mildly offended by messages that are clearly not relevant to their lifestyle. Just because Americans spend a lot of time watching TV, doesn’t necessarily mean that this is the best way to target them.
To really understand just what developmental level this commercial was targeting, you have to understand that my son is not yet 3 years old.
This example illustrates perfectly why small businesses can take advantage of the Internet, right now. Some companies are continuing to promote their brand to a wide, generally untargeted audience in more traditional, mass media outlets. At the same time, progressive, adaptable companies are taking advantage of the specific targeting and promotional relevance that the Internet can provide.
When watching TV or listening to the radio, you may be the subject of many ads that have nothing to do with you. Sometimes these commercials simply get filtered out, and sometimes they can become irritating, resulting in a negative experience with that brand. For example, growing up, I saw many commercials for diapers. These diaper commercials interrupted what I was concentrating on and interested in, and resulted in a negative feeling for the commercials and the brand(s) at the time. Whether or not this feeling carried on into my adult life is hard to say, but the fact remains that we use a cloth diaper service.
The very fact that a large brand is capable of marketing to a wide audience is also a weakness. When you target everyone, you can end up reaching no-one. The message can become diluted, resulting in a lower promotional effectiveness overall.
And this is exactly the opportunity that small and progressive businesses can take advantage of. Search Marketing offers the ability to specifically target a market that is:
- Interested in the product
- Dynamically targeted
- Action-oriented, and
- Potentially motivated to purchase
The visitor shows their interest in the product when they search for it, or visit a page that relates to the product. At the same time, Search Marketing is dynamically targeted in that the visitor that was a customer yesterday is not necessarily a customer today, and tomorrow’s customer is not necessarily a potential customer today - the target market is dynamic and changes with the passing interests of potential consumers. When a consumer searches for a product, they are taking an action to investigate the product, and they may or may not be interested in purchasing the product in the near future. Search Marketing can address these customers at the exact moment they are interested in that specific product.
Targeted correctly, a PPC ad for “peppermint tea” will take the visitor directly to a page that describes what they are looking for, and presents them with an easy way to get it.
Search Marketing allows marketers to directly target the exact demographic that wants to buy the product. It doesn’t matter if this demographic is young or old, male or female, homeowners or renters, educated or not. The only demographic that matters is that they are actually interested in buying the product.
At the same time, the product you are promoting online may or may not be the actual, specific product the customer is looking to buy. With Search Marketing, you can narrow the target not only from “herbal tea” to “peppermint tea”, but can also target “loose peppermint tea”, and “peppermint tea bags”, etc. Due to this highly targeted focus, ad dollars can be more effectively spent.
And here’s where it gets interesting: a smaller business can take advantage of the mass media promotional campaigns of larger companies. If a larger company is hyping a specific product, the smaller company in that space can use PPC to grab the customers who search for the product. If the larger brand is not using PPC, the smaller company can grab much of the new business.
Big brands are already beginning to wake up to the opportunities that Search Marketing presents. Many larger companies are running their own Search Marketing campaigns. As time goes on, they will learn how to improve their targeting, and really begin to leverage the power of online marketing to their advantage.
Until that time, there are still plenty of niches for smaller brands to take advantage of, if the target market is understood, and properly addressed.