8 Reasons to Target Prospective Customers Outside the Bullseye

There are a number of articles that claim it’s imperative to define finite targeting tactics to reach your target market, that aiming for the bullseye is essential in reaching new customers. I’m going to go out on a  limb and say many marketers that aim at the bullseye may miss the mark all together.  Let me be clear, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a clear target market. Rather, I  am saying you don’t always have to aim right at the bullseye to reach your audience or to meet your goals. In fact, some of your low-hanging fruit might not be sitting in your bullseye at all.


Let’s start by saying I am looking at the bullseye as where you reach your audience, not as the definition of the audience itself. Here are 8 reasons to expand your marketing efforts to include  the areas around the bullseye:

1. Targeting people in prime locations (in the bullseye) is often more expensive. If the bullseye is obvious to you, chances are it’s obvious to your competitors as well. And we all know that competition drives pricing. The more marketers are trying to reach your audience in a particular location, the more you will have to pay to be seen there.
   
2. The bullseye is  also often noisy and crowded. This doesn’t mean you won’t be able to attract some people  in the bullseye but you’re  fighting harder for your market share. If there are ten other companies offering the same products and services you are, and they’re all targeting the same target audience in the same space, your audience is inundated with ads. They’re likely to tune everyone, including you, out.
   
3. The areas just outside the bullseye are larger and less crowded but still ripe with opportunity. With less noise, it’s easier to engage your target customers. Say you go to a county fair on a scorching hot day to sell lemonade. You could pay for a premium spot in the food court area where you’ll compete against several other vendors selling refreshing products. The potential customer base in that location is split among 20 vendors. A better strategy might be to select a location at the furthest point from the food court area where people have walked  a long way and there are  fewer refreshment choices. Sometimes your product becomes more compelling outside the bullseye. The same principal applies to digital marketing. If you know your audience well enough you can find places they frequent that aren’t necessarily in the bullseye but still present viable opportunities to reach them with relevant messages.
   
4. Often there are people who can influence a buying decision hiding in the outer edges of the bullseye. While my marketing clients are focused on executing programs, I’m often researching other ways to solve their  problems. For example, I had a client that was specifically looking for a vendor to fill a need and even though a particular vendor appeared in their search, the client  didn’t give them much attention. When I searched  Twitter to see how other marketers  were addressing a similar problem, this vendor popped up over and over again. Not only were others speaking highly of their services, the vendor had outlined its solution in an easy-to-follow recorded webinar. So even though the vendor was targeting clients like mine through search efforts, it was those in my Twitter circle (combined with my own influence) that actually led my client to the vendor’s solution.  
   
5. Sometimes your ideal target market hasn’t figured out they have a problem yet. They’re not even close to your bullseye. I had a client that needed ABM (account-based marketing) solutions but wasn’t  thinking about it in these terms. In fact, they didn’t even know ABM was what they needed at all. They just wanted to create content for their sales team. After digging in a little deeper, I realized that what they wanted was to expand account reach. If you were a vendor of ABM solutions using ABM as your bullseye, you would have missed this client all together. Now if you were aiming outside the bullseye and building programs around “content to support your sales team,” you could have not only helped answer some of their pressing challenges, but also used it to help them identify what they really needed - an ABM strategy and the tools to execute it.
   
6. Helping to fill the biggest pain point of your target market might not have much to do with your product at all. My favorite story to share with clients is of a software company who identified that  their target prospects’ biggest pain was that they had no idea how to attract new customers. So the software company built a directory to help their target audience attract new customers. The directory had nothing to do with the company’s software but all users of the software received a free directory listing. Even non-users that were potential prospects received a listing too, which became their number one source of new leads. The software company marketed the directory on behalf of its  clients and in turn created a highly successful lead generation strategy.
   
7. Your content doesn’t always have to sell your product/service. In fact, I follow the 5,3,1 model I learned once at a Twitter meeting, not just for my Twitter posts, but all of my content. For every direct product/service promotion I present to the market I produce 3 solution-based pieces that tie back to my product/service and 5 value added pieces that have little do with my product/service directly.
   
8. By meeting your prospective customers where they are instead of expecting them to find you in your sweet spot, you’re effectively communicating to them that  they are worth finding. Providing them with value will help establish trust and continuing to show up will build a relationship.
   

Special tip for those marketing to small business. People who make buying decisions in small businesses often have a very different mindset than those responsible for enterprise purchases. It’s not uncommon for them to think more like a consumer even when making a business purchase, so using consumer oriented methods of marketing are often much more effective. It’s ok to target small business decision-makers in a much more casual, social setting. Think about the places they hang out in their personal lives and deliver business messages in those locations that are aimed at improving their overall lifestyle.

For 2017, I challenge marketers to get out of their comfort zones and look outside their bullseye to see what new opportunities they can find to engage prospective customers. I’d love to hear your stories about ways you reach your target market outside your sweet spot.

Written By KC Cox
With Contribution from Triniti Burton