Adapt the Tactic to Your Audience

It's come up a lot lately in individual conversations, so I make it a point to...uh...point it out again.

I need new ideas. This statement needs to be refined: You need new ideas for whom? I'm not splitting hairs, but generally people want new ideas and then they find people to market to.

Consider this example: A local restaurant puts on an open mic night. Their challenge now is to find people to attend said open mic night. They're now out pounding the pavement, talking to anyone who will listen, saying "come to our open mic night."

Did the general public ignore your promotion about how great your food is, but now all of a sudden they're falling over themselves to come in to read poetry or play the guitar? I doubt it. If an open mic night promotion works to the general population in your area then you would likely have had the same success with telling everyone how great your pizza/bbq/chicken tenders/steak is.

In other words, it's that you did any promotion at all that made it work.

The converse is usually also true. If an open mic night promotion fails to draw people, it probably wasn't the open mic night. It was your food.

If you're in this situation, a simple modification to the promotion might work better.

How can I get the church choir to come visit? Maybe an open mic night. It appeals to the target audience. If it works, try other church choirs. Try the HS drama club. But don't bother talking open mic night to the PTA.

Choose your audience first, then adapt tactics that appeal specifically to that group. You'll save yourself a whole lot of frustration.