Wizard of Ads – Who is your Customer?
Michaela Haight, September 2nd, 2024
Finding your target customer is crucial in every area of marketing. When your billboard advertisement does not appeal to your target market it will not be successful. However, Roy H. Williams in his book Wizard of Ads’, on page 25 questions this piece of industry wisdom.
“Each and every day, ten thousand advertising salespeople ask ten thousand business owners, “Who is your customer?” and the business owners reply, “Blah, blah, blah.” Then the ad rep says, “what a coincidence! That’s exactly who we reach!” The business owner then buys the advertising because he wants to “target” the right people.
“Unfortunately, this business owner has been asked a largely irrelevant question and has replied with an equally irrelevant answer. What the business owner has done is known as “overtargeting,” and it’s what invariably happens when advertising is approaching from the perspective of pure logic.
Here’s why the perfectly logical approach so often fails: We’ll assume the business owner decides his target is a woman between twenty-five and fifty-four years of age. Do we assume that the woman has no parents or siblings? Has she no mate, children, or boyfriend? Does she utterly lack co-workers and associates, neighbors and friends? Is she influenced by no one at all?”
For advertising to work marketers must see their customers as people with complete lives, not merely as a demographic or generational cohort. We must acknowledge that people fall into infinite categories and will be influenced by infinite things on a daily basis which we have no control over and will never be able to perfectly predict.
Billboard advertising is uniquely equipped to address this problem of “overtargeting”. Billboards are a mass medium, and they reach hundreds and thousands of passengers in cars everyday. ‘Passengers in cars’ is a category that covers nearly the entire population, every age, race, gender, and interest.
Therefore, if you put up an ad for a golf course your ad will reach everyone, even beyond your target audience. Maybe your target market is upper-middle class men ages 35-60. But some of these men have wives who want to encourage their husbands to exercise more, and your billboard gives them the perfect idea about how to do that. These men likely have children that want an activity to do with their dad on Father’s Day, and your message gives them inspiration.
This example can work with almost any service or product. There are people adjacent to your target market, and even your tertiary markets, that will engage with your business if they are reached with your message. A billboard will reach these adjacent customers when other advertising mediums will not.
In his book Wizard of Ads, Williams continues. “Over targeting comes from the mistaken assumption that people make decisions in a vacuum. The really important question to answer is this: “Why would a person choose to do business with you at all?”
The best ads are those that impress someone, anyone, deeply. Are you ensuring that your ads make a deep impression, or are you satisfied in knowing that you’re boring the socks off the “right” people?”
Billboard ads are massive displays with art that is designed to capture attention and make a deep impression on each person that passes by, regardless of if they are the target market or not. We will reach the masses with your message.
If you are interested in advertising on one of our billboards call us at 800-221-4114 or email us at meadow@meadowoutdoor.com!