I was never a fan of mass marketing or advertising. I always felt that the more we could customize messages to our potential clients the better we would do. I loved the advent of one to one marketing and the evolution of customizing digital print. It meant you could send a letter with someone’s name instead of something generic like “Dear restaurateur…”

Of course customization always begged the question of how long will it take for you to make $X versus let’s explode everywhere, the returns are going to be faster.

More than ten years ago I was writing about the fact that having a database of say 200 names does not mean you have 200 customers. I would go out on a limb to say, that even today, there are many organizations, hugging cherished lists and feeling somewhat comfortable that the number on the list represents their customer base, but they would be wrong.

Today it’s noisier and the entire marketing and advertising landscaped have morphed into human billboards aka influencers, appealing to very narrow audience segments, willing to part with their dollars to have similar experiences – trying new foods, fragrances, custom product lines etc., to be seen and to belong.

In a Gaping Void newsletter, it suggests, ‘you have to have a certain mental and operational agility’ if you want to be a significant player in this global marketplace. There is a ‘new agility’ that you must lean into. Gaping Void warns:

This is not a fad, it’s the future. The organizations that are winning are learning to be deeply meaningful to specific groups rather than vaguely appealing to everyone. The old question was “How do we reach more people?” The new question is “How do we become irreplaceable to the right people?”

This requires two things – having clarity around who your customer is so that you can attract the right ones and also creating messaging along every step of the way that customer buys, so that you are not just meeting their needs but exceeding it.

Ready to stop Pretending your List Is Enough?
Just because you’ve got names doesn’t mean you’ve got customers.
And showing up everywhere doesn’t mean you’re resonating anywhere.

If you’re ready to cut through the noise and actually connect with the people you’re meant to serve — let’s talk.