The days of mass marketing are dead. Ok, maybe not for Proctor and Gamble or Ford, but it is dead for any business whose customer cannot be defined as, “a breathing human being.” Which is, if we are honest, most of us.
There could be no larger waste of money for a small business with a targeted customer base than to buy 30 seconds of Super Bowl ad time, unless the expenditure garnered huge publicity by its very audacity.
Huge pharmaceutical companies are buying national ad time for laxatives for opioid users, which is odd when one considers that the treatment of constipation is probably 10,000 years old. Another ad promotes a drug to restore circadian rhythm to blind people. This kind of spending to reach small, targeted audiences can’t be justified. If all you can do is throw money at a problem, you are clearly out of ideas.
A Toyota dealership in Newton, New Jersey runs heavy rotation (and very poorly produced) ads on the Golf Channel. Newton is a relatively small and isolated town and the I guarantee that average customer lives within 20 minutes of the store. Yet there it is, advertising to people who have no idea where Newton is.
So how should we small business people market? The answer is simple, but difficult. We have to care.
We will talk more.
