by Steve Choate for the Buyer Presentation blog series

In my previous post I pointed out that one important element of your buyer presentation is your business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing plan, and that demonstrating a well-thought-out, strategic plan to build demand and draw in customers will be to your advantage. I went into further detail about understanding your product, audiences, and developing messaging to reach those audiences. This post will cover the development and measurement of your marketing campaign.

As mentioned previously, you may have multiple target audiences you want to reach. Once you’ve gone through the exercise of prioritizing your audiences, you should develop a marketing campaign for each priority group starting with your primary target.

Consistent message elements to each group will include item description, what makes it unique, and why and how it will improve their life, health, wellness, outlook, etc. Highlight the benefits your customer will get out of using your product based on what is important to each segment. Remember not to “one-way” sell, but rather engage your customers to build a relationship between themselves and your brand.

Message elements of each campaign will be the same. However, in order for you to effectively reach and attract customers, the approach needs to be unique to each group. For Millennials, you may want to rely more on social media, using bloggers and other influencers. For Baby Boomers, you may want to use print media as well as TV ads.

In certain media, you’ll want to show your product so the customer will know what to look for when they go to the store or shop online. If possible and appropriate, show your product in use and make sure you have a call-to-action in your message. Motivate your audience to purchase your product.

Measure, evaluate, revamp, relaunch, repeat

You’ll want to determine whether your campaign has been successful and utilize tools to measure the effectiveness of your programs. Evaluate each element of the campaign to determine what was and wasn’t effective. You can then revamp your campaign accordingly, eliminating those elements that did not resonate with your audience and focusing on those that did.

Relaunch your marketing campaign after you have revamped the message to what was most effective. Because it takes people time to adopt a new product, you need to put your message in front of them more than once. The rule of thumb is to achieve recognition you have to reach out to your target audiences seven times in several different ways. A “one and done” approach will not be effective. Imagine if the one time you advertise your product, your customer is on vacation, went to the kitchen to get a snack, skips the page your ad is on, misses a blog post, etc.

Reaching out only one time in one media channel is too risky.

Each user or potential user of your product is unique. As your sales and budget grow, you will be able to build deeper connections and learn more about your customers’ needs and desires. Use that information to evolve both your product and marketing to continue your success.