This can be one of most critical aspects relating
to campaign success or failure. The thought, effort and time that
we invest in identifying the best targets for you is
generally considerable, and frequently more work than the client
may think.
There are a number of key questions that help us
to compile an initial list, and then a further series of questions
which will enable us to prioritise how we target, how many
times we target them, and how we then decide upon how to
segment them.
Firstly, what are you looking for in terms of
business?
For example:
-
Immediate wins? (i.e. ‘low hanging fruit’)
- The
biggest wins?
- Long
term business?
- Widest
coverage or volume?
What factors influence their propensity to
engage with you/buy from you? (see ‘ideal profile’
below)
Are you targeting existing clients or new
business..or both?..and if so, in what proportion?
Are your targets based in the UK? Abroad?
Both?
Do you have an existing customer list to start
with?
Are you targeting a competitive base? ..which
base?
Which Industry sectors?: sometimes this is
very specific; often there may be a decision to be made on what mix
of sectors to target. What are the criteria? What is the reasoning
behind the proposed selection of sectors?
Size of organisation?: once again think
about total population of potential targets – are
there enough to generate the level of response you are looking for?
(Please consider the chances of getting a response, the timescales
you are looking to achieve that by, and hence the total number of
gargets you may need in your ‘long list’ of
targets in order to give you every chance of achieving that hit
rate.)
Type of organisation? (e.g. multisite; UK
head offices; millions of customers/products etc): what, within
their organisational makeup, might affect our ability to gain a
positive response? Would this multisite or possible multicast
contact?
Which contacts?
- Who do
we need to communicate with?
- How many
people do we need to engage with?
- Do you
know who/where they are?
- How
feasible is it to expect them to be contacted within the budgets
and timescales allocated?
- What
form of contact are they likely to respond to best?
What else do we need to know about these
organisations in order to determine how appropriate they might
be for targeting?
-
Turnover? No of employees? No of extensions? PCs? Servers?
- Location
of Parent Organisation?
- How many
sites do you think are bona fide targets in your sector?
- Existing
systems? (Hardware? Software? Networks?)
1. Introduction:
