... Advertising and publicity – communicating your key messages to customers

After choosing the right kind of customers to target, you will need to communicate your key messages to them.

‘Precision Marketing’ is all about getting the right messages to the right people in the most effective way possible. The ‘3Ms of Marketing’ technique helps to achieve that precision. The three Ms are: Market, Message, Medium – and it’s important to deal with them in that order. This technique invites us to think things through in a rational way, dealing with each market segment (or ‘customer type’) in turn.

Firstly, for each product or service, list the different types of customer that you are targeting. Secondly, for each customer type, list the marketing messages you need to convey. Then thirdly, for each message to a market segment, choose the most effective medium to convey the message to that type of customer. The right medium might be an email, an article in a newspaper, a text message, a poster in the right location, or a radio advert, for example.

This is why it is meaningless to evaluate different marketing media relative to each other unless you put them in context. In other words, the answer to the question “Is a website better than a press campaign?” is “It depends…”. That is, it depends who you are addressing and what you need to say.

The beauty of this process is that it untangles a pile of bright ideas about media, messages and markets – and lays them all out in straight lines, aligning a market with a message and then a medium in a precise way.

When each ‘Market-Message-Medium’ communication is identified, the best ones can be prioritised (you won’t have the time or resources to do them all) and put together into a coherent marketing campaign.

When constructing marketing messages, we need to differentiate between features and benefits. Irrespective of the features we think are important, the customer will buy on the basis of the benefits to them, asking “What’s in it for me?” Features and benefits can be separated according to this simple test: if the customer’s reaction to your marketing message is “So what?”, then you’ve been talking about features, not customer benefits.

Often we want to enthuse about what we create from our own point of view, but effective marketing requires us to look at it from the customer’s point of view. So, for example, customers want to know about how your design will increase sales, how your product will make them look good, or how your cultural heritage offering will entertain, educate or be part of a great day out. We need to devise marketing messages that press their buttons, not ours.

Tight budgets for marketing communications can be a problem – or a blessing in disguise. Financial constraints can help us to become more creative and prompt us to look for low-cost marketing methods which are highly effective, for example press releases which result in editorial coverage. ‘Word of mouth’ publicity managed well can become ‘Viral Marketing’, in which people pass along the news or ‘story’ about your product or service in an energetic and excited way, ‘infecting’ many other people with their enthusiasm in a manner akin to the spread of a virus. For this there needs to be a ‘story’ about your product or service such as those described in the book Buzz Marketing by Mark Hughes. Or it could be a product or service that gets passed along from person to person, carrying your message with it as it spreads. In our online world, digital files such as e-books, photos, music, videos and text spread around the internet at the speed of broadband, from one sender to multiple recipients. The MUTU viral video of graffiti art spreads the word about the artist and his art because it is shown in a fascinating film that people really want to pass on to all their friends.

Further information about a range of marketing communication techniques and media which might be appropriate to your creative enterprise or cultural organisation can be obtained from organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), the Arts Marketing Association (AMA), and trade associations or professional institutes in your own sub-sector of the creative industries.

In your marketing communications campaign there might be a place for Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Scribd and other platforms and networks. But before you become seduced by these exciting and powerful technologies, think about the two ‘Ms’ first: Market and Message.

In other words, be clear about who you are targeting and what you need to say to them. Then choose the most suitable medium or media that will help you deliver your key messages to your carefully selected customers.

Copyright © David Parrish 2009