Early Blog Post | iHeart Marketing, Inc. | Written by Heather Lefort
Is getting through to potential target clients becoming more of a challenge? If you are marketing and not hitting the proper contacts it's almost better (and easier) to spend your marketing dollars elsewhere. Finding out contacts that want to receive your promotions can benefit you in the long run. Your marketing will benefit from being more effective, increase the amount of interest per promotion, and your marketing budget will be spent wisely with a quicker return on your investment. The old saying "Throwing spaghetti up against the wall to see what sticks" is clearly not cutting it anymore for marketing.
Your potential clients are too inundated with numerous promotions these days. It's your responsibility to deliver your message in marketing not only clearly and precisely but in a manner that benefits your brand best. Additionally, your time spent on your marketing efforts is totally wasted if you are promoting to contacts that have no interest in working with you. For instance, purchased lists give you a full abundance of information. Problem with the information is it is not targeted to you. License agreements and purchased lists are basically public compiled data that everyone in your industry has access to. Taking the step further to target who is worthy of seeing your promotions will allow you to stand out and make sense of your market in a more intimate setting.
Targeting your potential clients can be very easy. For marketing I always recommend combining your personal contacts, dream clients, and a short generic list created from your database provider. However, after creating a list that fits your specialty you then must target that list down to your specific marketing needs. Having help with this task is great if you have the resources. If you are a hands-on kind of owner or don't have the resources you will need to spend some time with this. If not some options for assistance can be an intern, assistant, or marketing company.
Your generic list is the name I use to refer to any list created from a database provider. I call them generic because several other artists in your specialized field can create the same list. Going the step further will not only bring greater awareness to your brand but allow you greater results.
Originally published on iheartmrktg.com in 2012. Written for commercial photographers and illustrators marketing themselves to art buyers and creative directors — a niche where fifty competitors could buy the same contact list from the same two vendors and mail it the same week.
I went on to spend a decade selling that exact category: contact-data and campaign platforms at Agency Access, Yodelist, and BikiniLists. The tooling has changed completely since. The argument hasn't.
The page now reads "spaghetti," "hands-on," and italics where the original had caps. The archived 2012 version doesn't. It's under your byline presented as an early blog post, so a reviewer who checks Wayback finds small mismatches.
Easy fix, and it actually strengthens the piece. Add one line at the bottom:
Lightly copy-edited from the 2012 original; substance unchanged. Original archived version.