Tip #1 ∞ Define Your Audience (or Target Market) Per Project & Overall

Before you start a project with your ad agency, it is crucial to define the audience(s) of the project. Often there are many obvious audience(s) and usually there are some not-so-obvious audience(s).

Your audience could be your existing customers. It could be prospects. It could be both. But where are your prospects and how will you reach them? Do you already have an existing mailing list? Or do you need to create one? Do you own a store that draws from a 5-mile radius? Check your existing customer zip codes to discover how far your reach is.

I once planned a yellow pages ad campaign for a thriving doctors office with seven physicians on staff. They had been spending close to $100,000 for the past couple of years on yellow page ads that reached areas up to twenty miles away from their office location. They had purchased these far flung areas from their yellow page ad rep believing that people from that far away would travel to their location. My gut instinct told me they were over-reaching, and a quick analysis of their customer zip codes proved me right: Not one customer came from farther than a 10-mile radius, with the vast majority being within 3 miles. We were able to whittle their yellow page spend by more than half, improve their existing yellow page ads and listings, and boost their response rates.

So, we were able to define for that business their obvious audience was within a 3-mile radius. I had another account that sold nationwide from 35 locations. They wanted to conduct a national ad campaign. But we quickly found out that it would be much more cost effective to use direct mail to target existing customers (it's easier to sell more to existing customers than find new ones, after all!) and purchase a mailing list of potential customers, then use direct mail and email to reach these prospects. But they had one more problem: their CEO needed to be educated about the project and sign off on the budget. The CEO also needed to convince his board it was worth it. That was an audience - kind of hidden - we also needed to convince before we could embark on the project.

What are your hidden (un-obvious) audience(s)? Often, the CEO and his board will be an audience that needs to be considered. Possibly your employees should be targeted too. It's possible that a simple email to the staff and management about your planned campaign will be enough to reach them. Sometimes, you will need to present to internal groups through a more elaborate manner: a power point at a planned meeting for instance. No matter which tactic you employ to reach them, these groups should be considered an audience or a segment of your target market for your program and you should plan the best way to reach these groups as part of your project.

Let your agency know the ramifications and the best way to "talk" to the hidden audiences so that your project can proceed as quickly as possible and garner the best possible outcomes.

Tip #1 for how to work best with your ad agency: Define the audience(s)!