Go Where Your Customers Are

A story about President Obama’s appearance on ABC’s “The View” last year reminded me of one of the key marketing lessons I learned long ago.  In explaining the President’s appearance on the talk show, then White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told the media: “We made a decision to put the President on Jay Leno, David Letterman, and The View because people have busy lives, and it’s best to go where they are.”

The lesson bell that rang for me was the simple but often forgotten marketing concept:  Go where your customers are.

For example, when we developed an anti-cancer campaign, called “Learn To Live,” for the local health department many years ago, the extremely varied targets we wanted to reach called for a “go where they are” strategy.

So, to reach kids with anti-smoking messages we went to schools, youth clubs, cigarette-selling convenience stores, etc.  To send healthy eating messages, we went to grocery stores.  To increase mammograms, we went to women’s clubs and physician offices – and so on.  Thus, we delivered successful messages to our target audiences in places they frequented regularly, at the right time with the right message, and helped change their behavior.

Today, going where your customers are has an added dimension, because your customers are most likely on the Internet.

The growth of social media – Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. – has intensified online participation of the customer in an organization’s communications and public relations.  The number of worldwide Internet users visiting social networks exceeds a billion, and adults average about four hours a day online.

So, for marketers, social networking allows them to join customers’ conversations in a space the customer already occupies.  With targeted social media strategies, you can talk to customers, listen to them, teach them, learn from them.  You can even have them selling for you.  All good reasons for going where your customers are.

 ###