Wednesday 9 November 2011

Respect for Audio and Visual Learners

Yesterday I had two meetings back to back that I think were meant to send me a message.  At my first meeting, the radio was on in the background.  "I'll turn it down," my colleague says.  "I can't function without background noise. My radio is always on." 

The second meeting was with a friend of mine who is heading up a major healthcare initiative.  She developed all of her print marketing materials and then got together with a gentleman who was influential in the Punjabi community - one of her major stakeholder groups.  His eyes glazed over when he looked at the material.  After a bit of poking and prodding, she got to the crux of the matter.  His community is verbal, so her print material was wasted money.  Radio advertising is worth the bang for the buck.

This speaks to the age old importance of knowing your audience REALLY well before you spend money on marketing.  Canada is a beautiful multicultural country, and we need to recognize and respect how different cultures and different people learn.  This means finding out as much as you can about your customer before you do your marketing.  And redoing the research periodically, because as your business grows, your customer demographic will change.

Someone knows when they're being listened to and respected.  Even though you might have to spend more money to accommodate different learning styles (i.e., online videos and radio ads in addition to print advertising), respected customers means more respect for your brand.

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