What does generational marketing have to do with selling?
Are you familiar with C. J. Hayden’s 28-day customizable marketing guide, Get Clients Now!
It’s a great program because has built into it focus, direction, accountability, and constant feedback. It’s brilliant that it offers a program that is only 28 days, because the mind tends to go into overwhelm whenever it’s subjected to change or something new. Twenty-eight days is a nice bite-sized, manageable chunk.
C. J. defines marketing as “telling people what you do . . . over and over.”
I believe that’s true, but if you simply tell people what you do — no matter how many times you tell them — without a sense of targeting their specific needs, wants and desires in their specific language, you might as well be talking into the wind.
They float right over their head into the atmosphere.
What is needed is both consistency in telling them your message and using language that attracts and draws them to you, that magnetizes them to you as the obvious, most compelling choice.
If you’ve clearly defined your ideal client and target market, you are miles ahead of the majority of independent sales professionals who somehow believe everyone is their client. So, if you’ve done this piece, congratulations!
The kicker is that you’re not quite home free just yet!
In the third edition of the book Understanding and Managing Diversity, there’s a section devoted to the subject of Generational Diversity. “For the first time in history,” it reveals, “four distinctively diverse generations are employed in our workforce: veterans, baby boomers, Gen Xers, and Gen Yers.”
This presents us entrepreneurs with a special challenge when marketing our products and services.
Brian Clark of Copyblogger fame suggests in the guest article (written by James Chartrand), Are You Talkin’ to My Generation? that we may be focusing on the right target market, but inadvertently turning them off by the tone, feeling and word choice we use in our marketing.
For example, says Clark,
“Gen X might like friendly, slightly cocky content. The Silent Generation may prefer a professional, authoritative tone. Baby Boomers may like a site that stimulates thoughts of self-gratification and leisure. Gen Y might be searching for what’s cool and trendy.
Each generation has a core set of values that define the group as a whole . . .”
He then goes on to give specific ways to match what you say and how you say it with what’s in the minds of the consumer of the particular generation you’re targeting.
Very interesting, don’t you think?
How will you use this information to improve your marketing?
