Relevancy Part One

By Michael Palmer
Don’t focus on everyone; focus -- carefully target your messages. As markets fragment, simple demographic targeting is not enough. Marketers must thoroughly understand demographic and psychographic information and seek opportunities to be truly relevant. Really get to know your customers. Stop messaging that screams “Notice me!" Choose messaging that means something to your targets. Start connecting with them.
This is from Peter DeLegge's Marketing Today. He is the publisher and has nearly twenty years experience in marketing, advertising and e-business strategy experience, holding marketing management positions at both Fortune 100, 200 and medium size firms.
Now I don't know about you, but to me relevancy is not the new black.  McDonald's, under Larry Light's leadership, researched and determined that relevancy was in fact more important than differentiation four years ago.  So unless you have just pulled a rip van winkle and are just coming back to the marketing community - hello, its time to wake up, relevancy has always been the key.

Comments

[pdelegge]

Hi Michael,

First, after that post, you're officially off of my Christmas card list for this year.

Second, marketing relevancy isn’t the new black. However, it’s a superb way for a company to stay in the black.

Third, I re-read my article and think it is too high level (read: basic). My editor, at the time, removed the section I wrote on behavioral targeting, which I think might have driven my point home a little better. Based on your post and my re-reading the article, I am going to write a follow-up article (over a year later).

Fourth, I was motivated to write the article after reading a couple of research studies on how the majority of television advertisers don’t measure campaign effectiveness, the declining effectiveness of traditional advertising, how media has been fragmenting and a conversation I had with an executive from a leading consumer advertising research firm. I was also influenced by spending the last ten years very focused on online marketing, having managed and led online marketing at two Fortune 500s. Online marketing permits an incredible degree of relevancy, however, most marketers don't leverage the potential. I recently managed and designed an online campaign that achieved an 82% conversion rate (it was a search engine marketing campaign). I've never seen any results like that before and it was all about relevancy.

Fifth, the intent of my article was not to state that relevancy is the "new black," but that media and markets have fragmented and are further fragmented and the public has grown increasingly intolerant to advertising as a whole -- of course, though, not so intolerant to relevant advertising. However, advertising, in many respects, is still managed very similarly to the way it was ten years ago and decisions are often based on old habits instead of fact. We're often not really optimizing the media mix, we're allocating dollars to the most familiar silos. From multiple research studies, research experts, experience, conversations with peers and my own observations, the challenge for marketers to become more relevant still remains a challenge today. This will only get more interesting as TVs get their own IP address.

- Peter