1. Using Intuition vs Analytics for Targeting
Despite the abundance of analytic resources available today, marketers often rely on their own human intuition to make important targeting choices vs allowing analytics to drive those decisions.
For example, when selecting targeting variables for a direct mail, email or digital campaign, marketers often guess when selecting targeting variables and cutoffs. While intuition can be a powerful tool in life, it often can backfire when making marketing decisions because our own biases are built into the decision process.
Analytics, on the other hand, uses past behavior to mathematically predict the future and has proven over the years much more effective than intuition. Click here to learn more.
2. Using Income vs Discretionary Spending to Target Potential Buyers.
Household income is the most common selection criteria for consumer marketing. But studies show it might not be the best tool to predict whether a consumer will open their wallet and spend.
Instead, try other affluence data for targeting like discretionary spend. For example, 14% of the wealthiest US households are in the lowest 10% of spending. Conversely, 16.5% of the lowest affluent households are in the highest 25% of spending.
In this example, leveraging discretionary spend would be more effective to target prospects likely to spend than just household income alone. Click here to learn more.
3. Spending Too Much Time on Creative Execution and Not Enough on Offer and Targeting.
Studies show that creative execution only drives 20% of response while offer and targeting the right audience is a whopping 40% each. So it makes sense to plan accordingly. Be sure to spend enough time crafting the right offer to the right target market and then execute creative accordingly.
4. Leveraging the Wrong Channel for the Prospect
US consumers have many channel options today. Digital, Social, Direct Mail, Email and now Mobile are all selling opportunities for marketers. We now know consumers have very specific channel preferences and smart marketers will learn these individual preferences and target their campaigns accordingly with a multi-channel approach. Leveraging the right channel for the prospect and customer will result in better marketing performance. Click here to learn more.
5. Not Tailoring the Right Content to the Right Prospect
Consumers are bombarded with hundreds, even thousands of marketing messages on a daily basis. We all know first impressions are powerful and that’s why it’s extremely important for marketers to capture their prospect’s attention immediately with a relevant offer and message. How? Do the upfront research to dig deep and really understand prospect interests, preferences and personas. Custom analytics and/or off the shelf segmentation systems are great tools to gain a more in depth understanding of customers and prospects. Both can help target the right content and improve overall marketing performance.