Decide for yourself what you want - strategies to better reach your target group
COLUMN Peter Metzinger* explains why many advertising campaigns do not have the desired effect. In his column, he shows how Target Community Labs can make campaigns more successful.Consumers today are more critical and selective in their choice of offers than they were a few years ago. This not only makes it more difficult for companies to achieve the desired effect on their target groups, such as triggering changes in opinion, branding objectives or specific purchasing behavior. What's more, thanks to digital media, it is increasingly possible to measure how well a campaign has worked. This puts many under pressure to succeed. Fortunately, there is an antidote: make the customer the campaign king."The customer is king" is not a new truism in and of itself. But actually putting it into practice - and not just supposedly because you are a professional - is a challenge in itself. The so-called curse of knowledge stands in your way - you know the topic inside out and are absolutely unable to put yourself in the shoes of a target group that is being confronted with it for the first time. You may think you can, but well-intentioned is the opposite of well done.At the same time, the multitude of communication channels means that the public is confronted with an unprecedented amount of advertising and is becoming increasingly critical in its selection. This oversupply does not make things any easier. Keyword: ad blockers.But what is the right way for a company, association or other organization to deal with the increasing power of critical consumers? - By giving them even more power!When it becomes increasingly difficult to reach your own target group, when you ask yourself more and more often what else you have to do to get them to do what you want them to do, then you can remember another truism: the bait MUST taste good to the fish. As trivial as this may sound at first, it is usually a challenge to put it into practice if you formulate it a little differently: only the fish can decide which bait it really likes.Even the biggest advertising budget is useless if you fail to communicate with your target group. The bait doesn't have to please the client or the professionals in the agency, it doesn't have to win a prize and it doesn't have to be particularly surprising or original (which is often confused with "creative"). It only has to taste good to the fish.But you also have to let the fish - the target group - have their say. Today, social media is often seen as the most cost-effective and best way to stage a dialog with the target group. As much as this is true, however, this approach involves a lot of time and effort and requires a great deal of know-how on the part of the company as well as prior knowledge of the target group's usage behavior. A complementary approach would be desirable.This consists of having the target group itself work out the campaign strategy or other concept in workshops. At business campaigning GmbH, we have been doing this for our clients for over 10 years. Because we have observed that the target group participants regard the campaign they are planning as "their baby" and want to be involved in its implementation later on, we call these strategy workshops "Target Community Labs". Please note: these are explicitly not market research workshops, because the target group determines the strategy. Power is effectively shifted from the client and the campaign, advertising or communication professionals to the target group.However, such workshops must be led by campaign professionals. This is because the result is still raw material for the strategy. It can be compared to roughly pre-formed stones from a quarry. The target group has selected and pre-shaped the right material for them, but the finishing touches, the completion of the work of art, must then be carried out by a professional sculptor. The sculptor should have been present in the quarry and should also guide the work there in such a way that material is carved out that can be further processed afterwards.Target Community Labs thus provide the basis for impact-oriented campaign strategies that really reach and move the target group. Campaigns that were developed using Target Community Labs were up to four times more successful than simultaneously and directly comparable campaigns that were "only" developed by professionals. The reason for this is obvious: the target group is the best judge of which campaign works for them and how.
