When you’re composing marketing messages, choosing content that will engage potential customers is your top priority. However, it’s not always easy to know how to keep your customers’ attention. To create effective marketing materials, research your audience and then shape your medium and your content to meet their expectations.

Identify and target your audience

Begin the marketing research process by identifying your key audience and determining the appropriate strategy for reaching that demographic. For example, you might consider audience age. If most of your customers are young, a marketing strategy that incorporates new concepts and trends is likely to be successful. When researching your audience, you should also determine their expertise level with your product.


Recent studies have shown that novice consumers tend to choose products by comparing shared features while expert consumers tend to choose products with less common, additional features. When you know your audience demographics, you also know which features of your product or service you should highlight in your marketing messages.

Develop a message

Once you understand your audience, you’re ready to determine the medium and content type that will be most effective. For most modern audiences, email marketing is a simple and useful place to start. To create a memorable email marketing message, remember what you learned about your audience in the research phase. Then, develop an engaging and unique format, such as a story or anecdote about your company’s product, in order to distinguish your message from other marketing emails.

Customers in all demographics are interested in reading about the product’s usefulness, versatility and features in a practical context. Stories also create a narrative link with the product and encourage the customer to envision him or herself using and enjoying the product. When crafting your story, remember to highlight the aspects of the product that will appeal to your demographic.

For example, if you’re selling printers to novices, you can focus on common factors like ink cartridge life. For experts, you would want to tailor your message to include information about unusual features like thermal printing speed. Incorporating these product facts into a narrative will keep the reader interested and will encourage him or her to interact with your company.

After you have the customer’s interest, it’s important to provide the appropriate channels for communication. A recent survey has found that many customers lose their loyalty to companies that don’t provide opportunities for engagement. This fact highlights the importance of participating in the current marketing trend toward company blogs, social networking pages and online video channels. These digital means of interaction are vital because they give customers the chance to ask questions, interact with other product users and relate to your company on a personal level.

When you’re blogging, posting on social network sites or creating videos, remember to keep content short, sweet and positive. Customers are looking for a chance to see the more human side of your company, so give them that opportunity.

Creating effective marketing messages boils down to knowing your customers and delivering the information they need in a format that they can relate to and access easily. Research your customers and adapt your messages, from emails to social networking posts, to suit their interests, and you’re sure to grab their attention and, more importantly, keep it for many years to come.