by Brad Smith
With over 30 years experience in B2B advertising, I feel pretty comfortable talking with most B2B audiences. And I consider myself a fair and impartial judge of how a certain message will be received and processed by various B2B audiences.
Did I say that, or am I just repeating what clients have told me over the years? Probably.
Which leads me to my story. We developed four conceptual ads for a new client recently, and we felt pretty good about them. All of them. But which ad would resonate best with our target audience?
We felt we knew, but we took the time to do a little investigating. We took the ads out and sat down with the owner of a company in the industry we were trying to persuade. We showed him the ad layouts and reviewed the text. We watched him react to the different ways we communicated the client’s main product benefits.
It wasn’t a sophisticated research survey. The results weren’t even projectable. But we came away confident we now knew which concept would work the hardest.
My point here is that no matter how long you’ve been doing your job, never presume to know how your markets will receive your ad. If you have the time (notice I didn’t say “if you have the budget”), leave the comfortable confines of your workspace and venture out into the real world. You may be pleasantly surprised by what you learn.
With over 30 years experience in B2B advertising, I feel pretty comfortable talking with most B2B audiences. And I consider myself a fair and impartial judge of how a certain message will be received and processed by various B2B audiences.
Did I say that, or am I just repeating what clients have told me over the years? Probably.
Which leads me to my story. We developed four conceptual ads for a new client recently, and we felt pretty good about them. All of them. But which ad would resonate best with our target audience?
We felt we knew, but we took the time to do a little investigating. We took the ads out and sat down with the owner of a company in the industry we were trying to persuade. We showed him the ad layouts and reviewed the text. We watched him react to the different ways we communicated the client’s main product benefits.
It wasn’t a sophisticated research survey. The results weren’t even projectable. But we came away confident we now knew which concept would work the hardest.
My point here is that no matter how long you’ve been doing your job, never presume to know how your markets will receive your ad. If you have the time (notice I didn’t say “if you have the budget”), leave the comfortable confines of your workspace and venture out into the real world. You may be pleasantly surprised by what you learn.
Flickr Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/moriza/
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