Summary: The trouble with targeting in business is that a lot of people don't do it well. It reminds me of that line from one of the Godfather movies where Michael Corleone says something along the lines of, "if history has taught us nothing else, it's that you can get to anybody." Right?<br> <br> And that is now true in terms of advertising. You can get to anybody, but what is the cost?<br> <br> <br> <br> David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I discuss the trouble with targeting. Welcome back Jay.<br> <br> <br> <br> Jay: Hey, David, once again, I'm excited to be here and I'm really excited to get your feedback on this, because when you first said we're going to talk about the trouble with targeting, I kind of thought in my head, well, isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing?<br> <br> Aren't, aren't I supposed to be targeting?<br> <br> David: Oh yeah. Yeah. We definitely have to target. We definitely need to target. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with targeting. The trouble with targeting that I was thinking about is that a lot of people don't do it, and a lot of the people who do do it maybe don't do it as well as it can be done, and as a result, they don't get the results they're looking for.<br> <br> Some people think they're targeting and they may be doing that, but if you're not targeting to the point where it's resulting in better quality prospects, better quality clients, and conversations that lead to sales, then you might need to hone in a little bit better in terms of your targeting efforts and your targeting approach.<br> <br> Jay: Yeah, so as I think about targeting, there's a lot of work to be done upfront, right? If you're going to target somebody, you've got to know who the target is. And that can take a lot of research on your own part. A lot of experimentation, a lot of looking at past contacts, how those contacts came into your funnel, and understand those things before shooting arrow in different directions. The odds that you're going to hit anything that looks like a target are pretty slim.<br> <br> David: Exactly. And I think a lot of the reason for that is, many people think of the term targeting in terms of what you said, targeting's like aiming at something.<br> <br> But it's not just aiming at something, it's having an idea in advance of what it is that you want to hit. And if we think in terms of some of the more common ways of targeting. Some people don't even get this specific about it. But if you look at the different ways to target, I mean some people target geographically, I'm going to target everybody within a certain geographic area.<br> <br> If I'm a realtor and I'm working in a particular neighborhood... Great example of geographic targeting. Some people target by industry. If I'm selling B2B, I might target a particular group of people in a particular industry. I might target companies that deal with technical kind of things, or I might target education, or I might target finance, right?<br> <br> So that's a different way to target, by industry. I can target by need if I'm selling something like whatever, insurance, and I'm targeting people who need insurance. Okay. They could be wherever they are.<br> <br> Now, it's harder to do that when you target by need because so many people might need it and you might have to pare things down a little bit to be able to get to the people that you want.<br> <br> In the promotional products industry, where I do a lot of work, people can sell by program specialty. In other words, people who are looking for a specific result. If you're selling to people who are looking to increase safety in the workplace, then you could potentially be selling them a safety campaign, a safety program.<br> <br> There are some people who target by product specialty. There are different companies who might be looking for a specific ki...
