Have you got your timing right?

Have you got your timing right?

If have a great product, at a great price, that offers huge benefits to your customer, you’ll be wanting to tell the world about it yes?

In this article, Cheryl gives some pointers of what to say and when, and how often.

Get on your audience’s timeline

An important part of your marketing strategy should be ‘timing’ – sending out the right message, at the right time, to the right audience. Get it wrong and you could be shouting into a big black hole when you audience simply isn’t there.

If a key decision maker only checks his emails in the evening, send out your marketing emails in the evening. If they check their Twitter account on their morning coffee break, tweet then. In essence, find out when and where your audience is looking and make sure you’re there too.

But how do you find out about their timeline?

Well you could just ask them.

Research is a fundamental starting point for any marketing planning – conduct a survey or get some desk research done. You should also absolutely ‘profile’ your target audience and get a clear picture of your buyer and their habits. It could open a whole new avenues to you that you simply haven’t thought of.

3 steps to help with timing:

1. Write a profile for every person in the buying decision, including influencers.
2. Undertake some research and ask questions about when and how they consume content.
3. Develop your timing plan and key messages specifically for those personas.

So how often should you send stuff out?

Another aspect of timing is ‘Frequency’. You will hear Bryony Thomas of Watertight Marketing talk a lot about Impact + Frequency = Awareness. She makes no claim to that formula, and it’s been used in the world of advertising for years, but…

• Impact: Great creative and messaging (or offer).
• Frequency: The amount of times you send out that message.
• Awareness: The result of the right amount of impact vs frequency.

You can plan all you like – great campaigns, great promotions, great brand messages, but if you send out your communications to your timing plan, not your audiences, you’re probably wasting your time.

Build an accurate profile of your customers

In the world of Watertight Marketing, where we are accredited, ‘Timing’ is all about leak 10 ‘When’. It sits up in the ‘AWARENESS’ step of a customer’s journey and you should learn as much as you can about your buyers mind set during that step.

Find out more about touchpoints and the six steps of marketing here »