People have such a low attention span these days, that, anything that even remotely screams marketing, gets thrown into the delete mode even without a second thought. With electronic messaging this is even more convenient.

So while electronic messaging via email or via social media can get you very targeted audience, sometimes almost free, they also have the highest “ignore” rates.

While one of the reasons for the “ignore” is the massive number of unnecessary emails or messages people get, the other is because the messages don’t speak to the prospect in what’s important to him. So while they are trying to scan your subject line / headline , and if your message is boring, an alert pops up on their cell phone and they get drawn into it and you have lost that small window of opportunity.

Understanding what is going on in the mind of the prospect is critical – what conversations she could be having, are critical to ensuring that you are not boring. You can do this kind of specific messaging only if you have segmented the market so well, that the conversations start to become evident.

In any given market segment there will always be the early adopters, the laggards, the fence sitters etc. What is the use case that you are targeting will decide within the segment what is your Single Target Market to start your messaging with. If you are targeting the replacement market then you go with a different kind of messaging, while if you are targeting the early adopters you need to be looking at how your message can play to their vanity of being early adopters.

Creating messaging is a very time consuming job and requires a lot of subtle changes in the language. Whenever I have tried to get something out in a hurry, because the team was in a hurry, those campaigns have bombed for us. And the time which I saved at the beginning has actually resulted in a much larger waste. Boring messages, motherhood statements, just get people to select delete because of the plethora of other distractions which exist.

Till next time then. Don’t let your marketing get boring.

Carpe Diem!!!