What is e-Commerce Mass Marketing?
In mass marketing, you market the products to a broad range of audiences. Instead of limiting your focus to just one customer segment, you tend to widen the scope of your marketing efforts to accommodate everyone. For example, you are into selling phone cases. You would use the same marketing collateral and strategies to market your products to all your potential buyers.Advantages of Mass Marketing
Firstly, with mass marketing, you can reach a broader group of people by giving maximum exposure to the products you are selling. Going back to the phone case example that we gave previously, if you sell a range of animal print phone cases, you can opt to market each such case to a different set of people, which would be referred to as target marketing. Or you could also market all phone cases to all the people in a more generalized way and this would be referred to as mass marketing.Disadvantages of Mass Marketing
- Though mass marketing allows you to reach a broader audience, it is not without faults. For example, if you are running paid ads for driving traffic to your ecommerce store, targeting a wide general audience may cost you more as compared to running hyper-targeted ads to a specific customer segment.
- Not all the customers can be treated equally. Each customer that you deal with will have varying needs and might be at a completely different stage in their buying process. By deploying mass marketing strategies, you usually run the risk of not addressing the specific needs of customers. Moreover, it becomes increasingly difficult for you to measure campaigns’ effectiveness. If you are marketing to a large audience, how would you know which type of customers are lucrative to you?
- As you will be required to use a lot of manpower, you may suffer from lower profit margins oftentimes. In mass marketing, usually, you do not get to know your prospective customers on a granular level. Instead, you just have an overview about them. And, because of this, you will have to spend a lot of time and effort to attract a larger and more diversified audience with the same marketing techniques and messaging.
What is e-Commerce Target Marketing?
In e-commerce target marketing, you market your products to a specific segment of customers. Going back to the example of phone cases, you may decide to create different marketing campaigns to sell specific phone cases. You can also create a campaign for targeting people who are looking for a case that can provide maximum safety to the phone. Or you can even target people who are looking for an aesthetically pleasing case. Give it a thought and imagine how different the marketing campaigns for both sets of people would be.Advantages of Target Marketing
As you are targeting a smaller group of people, e-commerce target marketing would be an affordable option as compared to mass marketing. If you are running paid ads as a part of your traffic strategy, dividing your customers into different segments will make your ads easier to scale and cheaper. You will have a clearer idea of what would work for you and what wouldn’t and be able to modify your ad copy while optimizing your budget.- The biggest advantage of target marketing is the relationship that you can build with your customers. When you customize your marketing message for each type of customer, it is easier to build a returning, loyal customer base in comparison to when you opt for general messaging. By aligning the vision of your potential customers with your own product messaging, you can nurture and foster customer loyalty.
- As you have targeted your products to a specific segment of people, you are able to make well-informed decisions about the product improvements and upgrades. You have a completely different conversation line with the target audience, offering the chance to find out what improvements or changes they would like to see in your products.
Disadvantages of Target Marketing
Upon the first blush at this strategy, it may seem like target marketing may go a long way. However, to make that happen, you need to consider a few things before implementing this strategy: Firstly, it is important to understand that it takes some time to get the results. This would work best if you were working with a smaller pool of people. However, if you are looking for mass sales, this approach might not be the one for you. Secondly, spend some time learning about your target audience to decide what message will resonate with them.How To Apply Both of Them to Your Store?
When it comes to implementing either mass marketing or target marketing to your store, you need to decide which will give you the best results while taking into consideration their advantages and disadvantages. Follow the below mentioned steps to find out which strategy would work the best for you:- Does a product target a specific group of people or a general audience?
- Can you segregate different products to suit varying preferences of people?
- Does your recent or current message appeal directly to the stage where your potential customers are?
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