targeting

The majority of a company’s value is intangible, so a strong brand is a significant competitive advantage. As Philip Kotler wrote, “The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you are not a brand, you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low-cost producer is the only winner.”

At the Masters of Marketing Conference (it could only be in the US to have such a title) a senior marketer at Harley Davidson was talking about brands must not neglect the "growth market" of older consumers to focus solely on youthful audiences.

There is a lot more talk about Millennials in the media. This is the age cohort born somewhere between the early 1980s and early 2000s (i.e. they are somewhere around the age of 17- 35).

Do you really know who your customers are? Do you take a 30,000-foot view or a more granular, zoomed-in view in understanding and describing them?

I did several workshops this week on personas and journey mapping. The two are intimately intermingled, and that's an important point to remember.

As consumers, we have long left trails of data behind us. Our credit card firm has known what we spend money on where; and our mobile phone firm has known where we are whenever we have our phone with us. And both sets of data have been used by brands to personalise how they market to us, and the products and services they offer to us.

Are you overlooking a way to personalize your ads that goes far beyond the usual “Dear Roger” salutation? In my recent article, Put Your Customer in the Ad, I mentioned that LinkedIn was using profile pictures for targeted ads. Since then, I’ve been able to capture a couple of examples. The first one surprised me when it appeared, and to generate a second one I had to surf a variety of profiles. Here’s what I like about these ad:

Adliterate recently penned a rant about targeting in online advertising. The experience that triggered it is something all of us have encountered (or will eventually do so) - search for something online and be bombarded with ads for the same for eternity.

Guest Post by: Maria Pergolino

In the buyer driven atmosphere of 2011, B2B marketing can’t ignore social media. For the last decade, the net has been morphing into one huge social community with niches of interest breaking off and creating their own networking sites.

Fiat has utterly botched the intro of its quirky but very drivable 500 -- sales are under 50% of plan -- and it's about to fire people and hold a huge group-grope agency review to  come up with a new strategy. I have a simpler solution, which I hereby offer up for free: copy VW's Beetle and BMW’s Mini Cooper American launches.

I may be dating myself with this headline, but I’m hoping at least a few of my readers remember those Silkience hair care commercials from the 70’s because it helps make an important point about targeting.

You see, back then Silkience was marketed as a “self-adjusting” hair care brand and its popular commercials featured three women with different hair care needs. (I haven’t been able to find the actual spot that includes the “Chisa” line, but this is a good representation the campaign.)