Know-How Exchange : Other

There are at least three differences between going nationally with the same promotion or regionally/targeted with different promotions. First, the production cost of the regional or targeted promotion will be higher. Makes sense, right? If you have a specific message for each group, you have to produce multiple messages. This is higher cost than one message.

Next, if you have a fixed budget, if you go nationally, your penetration will be shallower. If you take a gallon of water and spread it out across 1440 glasses evenly, each glass will have a tenth of an ounce. If you pick a sixteen targets or regions, you put your water in 16 glasses and each has a cup in it - 80 times higher.

Further, if your promotion message is general enough to have a little in it for everyone, it might not be recognized by anyone. Picture making a sentence of eight words - one word each in Chinese, Spanish, English, Dutch, German, French, Russian, and Farsi. Using just the right word and graphic background, possibly someone very clever could make an eight word sentence that all readers would understand - but not likely.

In marketing, a focused effort always will be more effective at reaching the audience. In most cases because of better penetration, the payback will be higher. Even when you can't specifically deliver the message to the exact target because they are deeply buried in the general population, the message can be targeted and those who aren't in the target will just ignore it.

Making the message different from client to client means that your production costs for the message will go way up. However, effectiveness should be higher if the message is customized enough.

I hope this helps.

Wayde