Target Your Audiences: Why Men Hate Going to Church

I just finished reading this book about why men either don't pay much attention in church or don't go at all. You don't have to be a Christian to realize the conclusion of the book: Males are not well represented in churches because they do not like the feminine qualities of the church. In other words, if churches would make changes to appeal to a larger audience that includes males and then market themselves to that male audience, male attendance might rise.

Knowing your target audience and developing ways to attract that audience matters.


What have you done to target audiences? Why do you think targeting audiences is important?

Why e-blasts don't work

To please the modern customer, you need to make your product and your marketing strategies personal and convenient for your target audience.

A lot of e-blasts do not succeed in attracting customers for the very reason that they are not personal. If all you are sending are event or promotion reminders, if there's nothing more interesting or useful for the customer, your e-mails will be labeled as spam and deleted without a second thought.

Joanne Scheff Bernstein writes in her book "Arts Marketing Insights,"

"E-mail, like all other marketing tools, requires strategic and creative planning. Sending out an occasional e-mail message or blasting patrons with a series of frequent e-mail promotions when, for example, the organization wants to announce a special program or sell a large number of tickets to a production that has not sold well to date will not sustain interest and loyalty for very long. Each organization should develop an overall plan for e-mail marketing, just as it does for advertising, regular mailings, public relations, and other marketing efforts."

Besides being more personal, what are some of your plans for successful e-mail marketing?

The New Mr. Peanut: Finding Ways to Rebrand Yourself Successfully Part 1

Obviously, your brand can't stay new forever. All businesses have to change their slogan or brand at some point, even if it merely means adding something simple to it. In all cases, however, audience research is important. If you don't know what your audience wants, you won't succeed. If you don't test your new product or slogan or whatever it is on your audience, you have less of a chance of succeeding.

Research doesn't always work, as evidenced by Coca Cola's change in flavor, which tested well but didn't make it on the market. I'll write more about Coke in another post. You can't always completely depend on your research, either. Planters peanuts asked consumers what they'd like to see added to their Mr. Peanut mascot, and the number one answer was that no addition was needed. Some times the old still works. People like classics.

Planters went ahead with a major change, however, adding more clothes and a new voice to the character, as well as turning him into a computer-animated character. The voice, provided by Robert Downey Jr., may attract Downey's fans, but it doesn't fit the upper-class English accent associated with the character. The new commercial, itself, is funny, but you have to wonder how it will go over with the public. Personally, I like it, but we'll have to wait and see if it succeeds or not.

Cinematical.com and E! have more on the switch.

I'll be writing more on the successes and failures of Coca Cola and Mattel's Barbie movies in Part 2 and Part 3 of the "Rebranding Yourself" series.