16. Remembering Your Target Consumer

     Do you remember the lesson in which we mentioned a guy who likes to fish? All of his equipment and fishing strategy were designed to fit the kind of fish he wanted to catch. You probably remember that you designed your product and your marketing campaign to fit your target consumer. Well, that’s also true with your advertisements—only more so. You design your product, your marketing campaign, and your advertising campaign—everything—around your target consumer.

Identifying your target consumers

     First, let’s do a quick review of how you fit your marketing campaign to your target consumers.

Suppose you wanted a small child to take vitamins. Suppose you wanted an elderly person to take vitamins. Would you talk to both of them in the same way? Of course you wouldn’t. Would you give both of them the same reasons for taking their vitamins? You probably wouldn’t. Neither do advertisers.

Take food supplements, for example.

     To the small child, you may say, “It tastes good. It’ll make you strong and healthy. You’ll get this nice toy car to play with. Your favorite cartoon character likes it and wants you to take it.”

     To the elderly person, you may say, “It’s help you to have more energy. You won’t get sick as often. You want to be spry enough to go hiking, don’t you? I do want you to live longer.

   
     For that matter, suppose there were four little boys the same age. Supposed one liked baseball, one liked computers, one liked music, and the other was a temperamental sort who didn’t seem to like anything. You wouldn’t talk to these four little boys in exactly the same way, would you? Of course you wouldn’t!

     Let’s look at two examples of nature-based medicines and the target consumers for each of them.

1. Nature-based medicine for women with urinary cramps

2. Nature-based medicine for middle-aged and elderly people with joint problems

     Look at the image below. You will see the same high-mountain oolong tea in both packages. One costs NT$129; the other costs NT$888. That’s because one is packaged the same as most other teas. The other is packaged as if it were a thoughtful and expensive gift for a friend.

     Now look at the bottles of vinegar below. You will see basically the same thing in differently designed bottles at different prices. That’s mainly because the marketer is targeting different groups of consumers.

     You’ll see the same phenomenon for every product you see in the stores. Here are a few others we’ve observed.

1. Fabric softener—same company, same product, but two different colors: blue for little boys and pink for little girls.

2. Other fabric softeners—same product, different companies, different target consumers: a lavender-scented fabric softener in a lavender-colored bottle just for women (with a picture of a woman on it); a mauve-colored one for women with children (with a picture of a woman and a little girl on it); and a plain white bottle for low-budget consumers.

3. Toothbrushes: One brand is smaller than the other, and it displays images of cartoon characters. The other is larger, designed to fit the fingers of an adult’s hand, and it displays images of smiling, white teeth. It’s not hard to tell which targets small children and which targets adults.

     As you can see, both of these cereals are targeted toward health-minded consumers. The one on the left, however, more specifically targets health-minded women who want to lose weight.

     Even the colors you choose for your product or package should fit everything else in your marketing and advertising strategy. For example, most soft drinks are clear, but soft drink manufacturers add coloring to them. Root beer is colored a natural-looking brown. Lime soft drinks are colored a soft green, to remind target consumers of lime. We mentioned earlier that the lavender-scented fabric softener came in a bottle that was tinted a lavender color.

     You can see now that you don’t just make a product, advertise it, and hope that somebody buys it. You decide exactly which type of consumer you want to buy your product, build everything—from product creation to design to advertising to marketing—to please that one type of person.

Now it’s your turn!

     How will you and your team package your product or service”