There’s an old saying: “If you want to catch fish, go where the fish are.” The marketing and publishing corollary to that saying is, “If you want to reach your audience, you need to capture their attention in the way they prefer to be reached.”
Maybe you like reading the newspaper. Great. But does your target audience? If you’re trying to reach teenagers or 20-somethings, a full-page advertorial or feature article in a newspaper won’t gain you much ground.
For a younger audience, you have to make use of online social tools, like Facebook or YouTube or an iPhone app. If you’re trying to reach stay-at-home moms, think about where they hang out. They get a lot of information from online “mommy bloggers,” so perhaps you’ll go after a chance to be interviewed by one of those sources.
My point is simply this: Not only do you need to tailor the style and presentation of your message to your target audience, but you also have to deliver that message through the medium your audience already uses.
Need help figuring all that out? Let us know. We love getting helpful messages out to a culture that needs to receive them, in whatever forms and formats that make the most sense.
