Close the WIIFM gaps in your marketing message

What do you stand to gain (or lose) when deciding on a messaging strategy? The difference between casting a wide net with a catchy, catch-all, safely generic slogan and closing in with a tightly targeted benefit statement is simply a numbers game.

Whether consumers realize it or not, every ad is subconsciously measured against their internal WIIFM(“what’s in it for me?”)-o-meter. Ads that fail to immediately and compellingly answer WIIFM will fade right into the buzzing advertising backdrop that consumers have trained themselves so well to ignore. In fact, a study last year showed as many as 66%of people don’t even see online advertising when it’s prominently placed – and as few as 25%of viewers will even notice ads “below the fold.” It’s just visual noise.

So if someone does happen to glance up out of that stupor for one instant to take in a message that already has a 66% chance of never being read? It had better be 100% WIIFM.

A successfully targeted message requires an understanding of three things:

1. Your audience
2. Your product or service
3. What your audience wants from your product/service

The reason I call it a numbers game is the first item on this list, the audience. There seems to be a popular school of thought that in order to widen your net and draw in more prospects, all you have to do is add more demographics to your campaign – right? Just be a bit less specific about how the product does what it does and for whom, and it’s sure to resonate with someone.

We call this approach throwing a bunch of stuff* against a wall and hoping some of it sticks.

(*except we don’t say stuff)

With the amount of capturable and usable demographic, and even psychographic, data available on today’s consumers there’s absolutely no excuse for not intimately knowing who the users of your own products are.

From their likes and dislikes, to communication preferences, to their level of education, to whether or not they like cats – think of these as clues in a treasure hunt, or a paint-by-number portrait that fills in the composite personality of “Jill Consumer,” a hyperreal persona on the receiving end of your highly targeted message.

The payoff is a tighter net, extended to fewer prospects, but woven in such a way as to convert a larger percentage of those prospects to truly loyal, lifetime buyers.