A rant against lazy marketing

As marketers we have the luxury of knowing something about the people we market to. We have data dashboards, trends, purchase information, generational knowledge – and the list goes on.  There are ample opportunities to really make our messages relevant to the receiver. But it’s easy to fall in the trap of addressing only one aspect of those individuals. Even though someone might be a certain age, gender, income level, weight or whatever, they don’t want to be pelted with the same one-dimensional messages over and over again. That’s lazy marketing.

It’s important to really consider the whole individual as you develop your messaging. Regardless of whether you have big, deep data that allows you to “know” someone at a one-to-one level or demographic/psychographic data that gives you a snapshot of someone in a similar group, taking one attribute and pounding on it is tiresome and irksome.

Everyday I get marketing pieces, washed in pink, telling me I can be more assertive, manage my emotions and learn to handle “difficult conversations”. Apparently they think it’s ok to talk down to me because I’m a woman. I’m also told I can lose weight, look 10 years younger and manage my diabetes because I’m a certain age. Clearly they don’t know me. At all. Many of these companies have more data on me than I care to think about, but they don’t use it to market to me as the health-conscious, life-long athlete that I am.

I am so tired of seeing these messages that I’m considering opting out of many of the newsletters I’ve subscribed to for years because of their lazy, one-dimensional marketing.  With the importance of content marketing continuing to grow, it should give marketers pause that they may be alienating the very target market they are trying to attract. I believe the message is no longer just buyer beware. Now it’s marketer beware.