Have you ever found yourself talking with someone who’s always finding a way to make the conversation about themself? How quickly do you notice what this person is doing and how quickly do you start to tune out whatever they’re saying?

We live in a day and age where people expect an onslaught of marketing messages on a regular basis. As a result, we are all pretty quick to know when we’re being marketed to. This means the second our brains alert us to “marketing!” we are often already tuning out. This can make achieving your marketing goals more of a challenge.

So, ask yourself these four questions to help achieve your marketing goals.

1. What’s my marketing goal?
“To make money!” We all know that. But be specific – do you want to capture new leads? To warm up stale ones? To create brand awareness in a new demographic? Identify specific and actionable marketing goals to ensure you stay on track with your marketing campaigns. Each goal, while simple, serves as a step towards earning sales and making money.

For the purpose of this blog post, let’s decide that our goal is to generate new leads for a high-end solar gadget. Now that we’ve determined our goal – remember it, and keep coming back to it.

2. Which audience will be most receptive to my marketing goal?
I know that my product is “green”, that solar is trendy, and that many recent college graduates are excited about preserving the environment. Great. Can these recent college grads help me achieve my marketing goal? Can they become new leads? No, because they probably can’t afford my high-end solar gadget. While this audience might be strong advocates for brand awareness, they won’t be the ones buying my product any time soon.

So instead, let’s choose to go after established working professionals that have expressed an interest in solar. This audience is interested in and can afford my product. This audience can turn into new leads. This audience can help me achieve my marketing goal.

3. What messaging will my audience be receptive to?
Every marketing goal can be more effectively achieved with carefully finessed messaging and imagery that’s created with your audience in mind. Now that we’ve defined our audience, we have to decide how to speak to them. If you were teaching the ABCs to a group of five year olds, would you use the same lesson to teach the ABCs to a group of adults? Probably not, because different audiences will be receptive to different words, tone, and visuals.

To appeal to established working professionals that we want to turn into leads, we’ll need visuals that convey the same quality that our high end gadget and price point do. We’ll also need an attention grabbing statement or question that highlights the value of our product. Avoid listing every feature of the product in our messaging here because our marketing goal is to generate new leads, meaning we want to capture our audience’s contact information. Once we’ve peaked our audience’s interest with tailored messaging and visuals, we want to earn their contact information by exchanging it for additional information about our product. Once an exchange has been made, we’ve gained a lead. And what was our marketing goal? To generate new leads.

4. In which media channels will my audience be receptive to my goal?
With a little research and imagination, we can often determine some of the most popular media channels that our audience is exposed to. But the key is placing our marketing message not just where but when our audience will be receptive to it. If our marketing goal is to generate new leads for a high-end solar gadget, we need our audience to be open minded to a higher priced item and to have the time to learn more.

Say we determine that our target audience values buying local and an opportunity comes up to advertise in small, local supermarkets. Will our chosen audience turn into new leads here? Probably not: as a high-end gadget with a higher price point, our audience won’t have time to consider our product while focused on running errands. Becoming a fleeting after thought from an evening’s shopping run won’t be effective marketing for us. Instead, look for media channels that will reach our audience when they have down time to reflect on the value of our product. Perhaps while they wait for the train on their way to work? Or when they’re browsing through the news online in the evening? To achieve our marketing goal of generating new leads, we have to be considerate of our audience’s time and emotions.

In Conclusion…
When you work with a product every day, it’s easy to fall in love with it. It’s also easy to forget that those who don’t see your product every day may not immediately see the value that you do. Each time you begin a new marketing campaign, pause to reflect on a simple marketing goal that you want to achieve. As you develop each part of your campaign, remember to ask yourself, “How will this help me achieve my marketing goal?” every step of the way. Remembering your goal and anticipating your audience’s disposition not only helps you to market smarter but also to more efficiently achieve your marketing goals.