Targeting Love, and Intelligence, on Valentine's Day
As Valentines Day approaches, grocery stores slowly become bombarded with colors or red and pink flowers, cards, stuffed animals and so forth. It conveys a message to those in relationships as well as singles. As a single (woman), myself, I begin to think about the holiday and the reminder that may be I should actively search for a significant other, or even just a valentine will suffice. This process is not too far off from the process of targeting intelligence or even influencing consumer behavior.
If you really think about it, the steps are somewhat similar. First of all, the whole concept and/or goal is to build a relationship. And the only way to do so is to first brand yourself to the consumer. Before you can influence a consumer to buy, you must build a relationship with him or her and even prior to that you must define yourself to him or her. Then you must ask yourself, who exactly do I want to influence and/or build this relationship with? You must determine who the demographic is that you want to influence. For me, this is the part where I pick and chose the qualities I am looking for in a mate which well help for the next step. The step is to WHERE: once you have determined your audience you must now locate the sources you wish to use to access them. If I am looking for someone who is athletic, it is likely I would locate this person in a gym rather than at the library. Or even targeting college students on campuses to sell a book on fraternities, rather than trying to locate them at an arcade in the mall. You simply cannot get to WHERE without first determining the WHO.
And once you have determined the who, what and where, it will only be a matter of time before you find exactly who you're looking for. But it's not over yet. Just because you have built the relationship does not mean it will be automatically be a successful one. True success, of relationship or even a business comes with hard work and constant nurturing and if you want to continue to influence consumer behavior, don't forget to constantly stay connected.
