The Average Customer Doesn't Exist
In the quest to optimise marketing budgets, to drive exponential return from every marketing dollar spent, many brands have fallen prey to the misconception that identifying and marketing to ‘averages’ is a smart way to go.
They’ve held the belief that finding the few shared characteristics and behaviours amongst a wide and diverse audience and communicating with them on the basis of these characteristics and behaviours, would mean wider reach with lower spend.
Why create ten ads when perhaps one all-rounder will do.
But the problem with average is that it forces you to think in the middle ground. The middle of the road. The middle distance. It forces you to focus on shared characteristics amongst a wide and diverse group of people that ultimately gives you little upon which to connect, resonate and even more importantly, differentiate.
Average is well….. average. And nobody likes to think of themselves as average.
And what brand wants to be "average things for average people"?
Where's the opportunity for growth and scale in being average?
And what happens to your brand when market forces cut that average person's disposable income in half?
So, is there another way?
We know that when it comes to targeting consumers, segmentation is a key driver in directing spend. With this in mind, how can you approach segmentation in a different way that enables you to surface insight that creates opportunity for your brand.
First things first; consumers are people. They’re individuals. They’re us.
And no matter what commonalities we share with others, first and foremost we think of ourselves as individuals. Unique. Special. One of a kind.
We have our own unique psychological make up. We have our own unique mental frameworks. We have our own view of both ourselves and the world that’s been informed by our very own experience and influences. Our context and conditions are our own and unlikely to be mirrored at scale.
So, whilst we may share certain characteristics, attitudes and emotions, on a fundamental level, we are as individual as our fingerprints. We are the very opposite of average.
And that means that any brand trying to talk to each of us based on the one or two characteristics/traits we may share with millions of other people, is simply destined to fail.
They’re not talking to us, they’re talking at us.
And in a time where earning attention and trust is a necessity for a brand to survive, let alone thrive, it’s absolutely the wrong track to take.
So what then? What now?
You have to do the exact opposite. You have to de-average your target audience.
You have to take your one mammoth cohort and accept it is gone forever.
You have to be willing to go to zero and build back up.
You have to believe that the future is in micro cohorts. Micro cohorts based not on old, traditional segmentation criteria or motivational mapping, but on current, real-time, attitudes, emotions and behaviours.
You have to explore how your target audience think, feel and act in a context that's relevant to your brand. Their attitudes, emotions and behaviours.
You have to look at what they say AND what they do (paying particular attention to the gap that exits between these two). Seek to learn not just what they do, but why they do it. And how, don’t forget the how.
You have to uncover the nuances, discover the subtleties.
You have to keep asking questions. Keep observing. Keep learning.
You have to go deep, and you have to go wide. You have to care.
And you have to step back and let the real patterns and echoes come to the surface.
And when you see them, when those patterns appear, that’s where the magic happens.
That’s when you have your micro-cohorts.
Because of how you discovered them, how you learned about them, what you chose to focus in on, you are now well equipped to start authentically earning the attention and trust you need.
Because your starting point now is them, not you.
Because you can speak to them both as the individuals they are, and the potential members of your tribe that you'd like them to be.