Are You "Shooting" Your Marketing Dollars with a Shotgun or a Rifle and WHAT's the Difference?

Are You "Shooting" Your Marketing Dollars with a Shotgun or a Rifle and
WHAT's the Difference?
Copyright 2006 Sandra P. Martini

In marketing your services or widgets, what approach do you
use? Do you scatter your marketing efforts over a range
hoping to hit something? Or do you take careful aim,
hitting the target more times than not?

Shotgun Marketing

Gun aficionados are going to shoot me here (no pun
intended), but whenever I use the term “Shotgun Marketing”,
I have this vision of Al Pacino blasting away in Scarface –
I’m repeatedly told that he does not use a “shotgun”, but
you get the idea.

A shotgun shoots shells over an area with the hope that at
least some of them hit the target. The word “shotgun” is
actually defined as “covering a wide range in a haphazard
or ineffective manner”.

Examples of shotgun marketing include cold calling, bulk
mailings and advertisements in large circulation general
newspapers. In the online world, shotgun marketing
includes banner advertising on sites that get large
quantities of generic visitors and spamming emails.

If you are a professional services business (virtual
assistant, web designer, etc.) and haven’t adequately
researched your prospective clients, your marketing is
going to have the same ineffective scatter-type effect.
You will blanket an area with postcards, direct mail
campaigns, newspaper ads or online advertising without ever
actually knowing if your prospects are “being hit”.
Depending on your business, this could be good or it could
be bad – either way, it’s going to get real expensive real
quick.

You naturally get wider coverage using the shotgun approach
to marketing – this could be good if you are trying to
blanket an area to let them know you exist (for example, a
new coffee shop or a new mechanic in town). The downside
is that it’s costly as studies show that you need to be in
front of someone 7 – 10 times before they even recognize
your name.

Rifle Marketing

I think you know where we’re going with this one. Rifles
bring things into focus, allowing you to take careful aim
before pulling the trigger.

If you know your target audience, really know them, you
should be able to initiate marketing campaigns with
sniper-type accuracy.

“Rifle Marketing” allows you to be more personal in your
marketing campaigns. You can also devise campaigns that
are made up of more than just a simple postcard or letter.

For example, to symbolize how much time (or business) your
potential clients are wasting (throwing away) by not hiring
you, send your sales letter in a small trash can with a
label on it (always send First Class). Your letter is
bound to be opened more often (and more quickly) than all
the other letters arriving in envelopes via Third Class
mail.

Innovative campaigns such as the preceding not only
increase the chance that prospective clients will call you,
they tell the client something about you before you even
speak: you are results-oriented, you think outside the box
and you think before you leap. This is the type of person
that smart business owners want on their team.

Which is better?

At first glance, you may want to say that the “rifle”
approach is better than the “shotgun”. However, it depends
on your business, your personality and your target audience.

Shotgun campaigns are, by their very nature, less personal
than the rifle campaigns. This may be appropriate to your
business. I generally think of shotgun marketing as
creating awareness and rifle marketing as getting results.

Whichever your preference, remember to keep your marketing
campaign true to your personal style and that less done
well is much better than more done poorly.


----------------------------------------------------
Online Business Manager & Entrepreneur, Sandra Martini,
publishes the 'Effective Entrepreneur' weekly e-zine. She
also coaches small business owners to more efficiently
manage their businesses while increasing profits and having
fun. Sandra's coaching programs are available via
teleconferencing, emails and telephone calls. For more
information or to sign-up for ‘Effective Entrepreneur’,
visit http://www.online-biz-coach.com/today.