Face It: You're Not A Priority To Your Target Audience

In my role as a business development specialist at an advertising agency, one of the first important rules I learned for my job was that I wasn't my target consumer's first priority. When I first started learning my craft, it astounded me that I would write emails, make calls, send direct mail pieces, etc to prospects, yet, somehow not get through to them. Aside from the obvious hit my pride took, I think it taught me a very valuable lesson: As valuable as I think the service I offer is, I'm just not a top priority for my audience.

My audience, marketing directors & C-level executives, are very busy people. They have a lot on their plate from day to day, and most of their daily tasks DON'T involve my services. So if hiring an advertising agency isn't on their top list of priorities, how do I break through to them and make them listen?

There are a couple of different schools of thought here, but most of them involve frequency. In my world, it depends on the type of prospect I'm marketing to, namely, how badly I feel they need our services. If there's a prospect that I determine really has a horrid marketing program in place, I generally try to flood them with correspondence, making sure that they see our name over and over and over again. The thought is that they'll eventually see our name enough to start really paying attention. Hopefully the connection is made and they make the call.

If a prospect is pumping along but seems as though they'd be a good prospect at some point, I may take a more laid back approach. For example, I know that prospect A will need our services at some point throughout the next year, if not right now. So instead of sending them a note a week for six weeks, I might decide to space my correspondence out to once a month for six months. The hope here is that one of my six pieces of outreach will hit them at just the right time and encourage them to make the move to call me.

Despite the approach you take, always remember frequency is key. In advertising, we abide by the rule of 7. That is, it takes between five and seven impressions before a consumer acts on a piece of advertising. So despite the pain your pride might feel from being ignored, continue to be persistant and you'll make things happen!

Garret Ohm