In Marketing, There’s No Accounting for Taste

In the world of marketing, as in all professional spheres, it can be extremely difficult to leave your personality at the door when you leave the house.

An individual’s tastes are of course hugely important and can go a long way towards informing the kind of person you are, but if you’re too forthright with your own personal likes and dislikes when it comes to your company’s marketing activities, you could find that you end up spending a lot of money on a series of unsuccessful campaigns. In marketing there’s no accounting for taste, and you’re about to find out why…

Say, for example, that you’re a keen fly fisherman. You live and breathe fishing and like nothing more than to spend your weekends casting a brightly-coloured fly out onto the fast-moving surface of a glistening stream or brook.

Fishing may very well be your idea of heaven, and an advertising campaign featuring fishing related terminology and imagery would probably be right up your street. Such an approach, however, would n’t be for everyone – the very aspect that you may feel defines your personality would be just as likely to leave somebody else entirely cold.

Marketing, then, is all about appealing to the masses. Our fly fishing example could work brilliantly if your target audience is other fly fishermen, but if it isn’t, such an approach would be highly unlikely to pay dividends.

In marketing, you need to identify your target audience and then hit upon a marketing strategy that will reach as many of them as possible. You may not like the marketing strategy you hit upon, but always remember, your business’ campaigns aren’t intended to appeal to you but to your audience instead.

Many of the most successful marketing campaigns aren’t necessarily the most creative or interesting, they simply hold the most appeal to the broadest swathe of the general public.

It can be extremely difficult to disassociate yourself from the content your company produces, which is why it’s important to get an outside perspective when it comes to deciding upon your marketing strategy.