Don’t Be A Left Shark: Align Your Message With Your Market

They say that over 118 million people were watching the Super Bowl Halftime Show a few Sundays ago.  If the Internet is to be believed, many of those viewers shared a bit of a chuckle at the expense of a dancer who will forevermore be known simply as “Left Shark,” because of a pair of dancers dressed in foam shark outfits, he was the one on the left.  He was also almost comically out of unison with his partner and with the beat of the music.  His ungainly stumbling ensured his place in pop-culture infamy.

Are Your Campaigns Making Your Business A Left Shark?

Marketing your product or service to your target audience is something akin to a well-choreographed dance.  When at its most powerful and artistic, both dance partners seem to move as a single unit.  They are comfortable in their interaction, they appear to anticipate one another’s movements, and everything they do appears almost effortless.  When your marketing message is aligned with your intended market, you and your customer are dancing in sync, and the sales process becomes almost effortless.

It’s when your marketing message falls out of sync with your intended audience that those powerful, effortless dance moves suddenly become forced, clumsy and unpredictable, and you may find yourself flailing around like Left Shark, trying desperately to regain synchronization.

Dance To Everyone’s Favorite Radio Station

Dancing is much easier if you pay attention to the music.  The key to aligning your message with your audience is dancing to the music your audience is already listening to.  Thankfully, when it comes buying products or services, every potential customer you interact with is a regular listener to the same radio station: “WII-FM” (What’s In It For Me?).  Too often, when we market ourselves, our business or our product or service, we spend a lot of time pointing out all of the wonderful things the product does, how experienced we are in providing our service, or how the service we provide is head and shoulders above our nearest competitor’s.  Your audience feels as if they are being “pitched” and naturally goes into resistance mode, or worse, bypasses your marketing message altogether because it does not tell them how their needs will be met.  You realize you’re losing them, and before you know it you find yourself doing that Left Shark shuffle trying to win them back.

What your audience is looking to buy is not really your product or service per se; they are looking to buy what your product or service will do for them.  How will they benefit, directly, if they purchase from you?  How will your product make their lives easier? How will your service allow them to perform better in the eyes of their bosses, coworkers, families or friends? Summed up: What’s in it for them? When your marketing message addresses these questions, you have tuned into your audience.  You are in sync, unlike Left Shark.

Survey The Situation

If you do discover that your message is not aligned with your audience, especially if you are in the midst of a marketing campaign that is spread over several channels, don’t panic.  When you panic, you become Left Shark.  Think of how awkward Left Shark looked overcompensating in an attempt to find the beat once he had fallen so badly off rhythm.  Now think of the salesman who realizes the sale is growing less likely with each passing moment, and who begins “overselling” in a vain attempt to save the sale.  That salesman begins fumbling as awkwardly as Left Shark was dancing.

You can realign with your audience by changing your dance steps.  Remember WII-FM.  Survey emails are a great way to ask questions about what your customers hope to gain by buying from you, what their immediate and long range goals are, and how they envision their worlds being easier with your product or service in place.  Now you’re getting to the crux of what your customers are really looking to purchase, and you can gear your message accordingly.

A survey email campaign is relatively simple to build and, if done well, can quickly glean a great deal of information about what your audience is looking for.  Synapse is adept at building survey email campaigns designed to generate the most response and the most valuable, usable data.  We’d love to discuss how we could do the same for you, and help you avoid being a Left Shark.

Start a conversation with us today – and avoid the embarrassment that Left Shark felt in front on millions.