Vanity versus Sanity

When times are tough, we see retail board rooms demanding more footfall as it is seen to be the solution to declining sales. Money is pumped into above the line campaigns and targeted/digital marketing must be cut to pay for it. This is pure vanity! In many cases, almost 20% of footfall buy one item for less than £10, if they buy anything at all! So why chase more of these?

The sanity approach is to ensure that the consumers you are attracting have a high propensity to purchase and certainly to have a bigger basket.

Switching to advertising at the cost of targeted activity gives you visibility but this does not necessarily mean effective. Twenty years ago, these big ad spots were a fairly safe bet. Today, with only one in five people watching TV live, and consumer attention being divided across a myriad of different media channels and devices, this is no longer the case.

While TV and press advertising can still play a role in providing a background hum in order to maintain awareness and brand credibility, its reach is considerably diminished and there is significant wastage. Targeting tends to be at a very topline level and the majority of people will not be in the market for their product or service. And yet, in today’s data-driven, digital world it doesn’t need to be this way.

‘Intelligent targeting’ should be the new focus for savvy marketers. When money is tight, reaching the right person at the right time through careful segmentation is a far more effective way to go than channelling money into big awareness campaigns. Yes, the potential audience will be smaller, but it is one that is far more likely to respond.

Traditional direct marketing channels such as direct mail and email are perhaps less sexy than TV and press but, with the addition of today’s newer digital direct channels such as digital advertising and social media, marketers now have a variety of powerful ways in which to reach specific target audiences with highly personalised, relevant communications.

What is also new for many marketers is the data they can use to target people through these channels. In particular, more are finding opportunities from using life event data – i.e. data that identifies people going through a big life event such as moving home, having a baby, children leaving home and retirement. All of these have a huge impact on purchasing behaviour and, far from being one day events, tend to last for months (or even years) of planning and the ripples of change can continue for a long time afterwards. Life event data adds a layer of detail to demographic and behavioural data that qualifies why someone is behaving in a certain way.

Here at TwentyCi we hold the UK’s largest database of property & homemover data enabling brands to directly engage with this high value audience. With over 200,000 property moves a month our Clients are enjoying unprecedented levels of ROI exceeding £25:1 by targeting an audience that is actively in market looking for a wide variety of products & services from carpets, to beds, from cars to holidays. Our insight and expertise is unparalleled.

So, if any marketer out there is challenged to drive traffic or footfall, it’s important that they don’t allow themselves to be drawn into big-budget, ego-boosting broadcast campaigns. The better approach is to make a case for intelligent targeting – and the numbers will speak for themselves.

Sanity over vanity will win the day!

For more information about TwentyCi's property and homemover data provision and insight solution, or any of our other services, please call 01908 829300 or email enquiries@twentyci.co.uk.