A message that tries to speak to all your customers at once reaches none of them. Every piece of advertising has to aim at one particular public, so if you have several publics, you will have several messages.
This runs against the instinct of anyone managing a small budget. One message for everybody looks like a saving: you write it once, pay once and hope to reach everyone. The source behind the booklet sees a loss in it, and explains why.
The rule: each piece of advertising, one public
The rule in the source is short. Every piece of advertising should be designed to reach a particular public, meaning a group that has something in common, such as an interest, a trade or a standing.
From that follows a conclusion that surprises most owners. A message that tries to speak to everybody is no more efficient, because in practice it reaches nobody.
The source sums it up in seven words: “When you mix it up, you fail.”
The reason ties back to what a public is. A public is held together by a shared interest, trade or standing, so every public has a question of its own: what does this public want to hear. When you think in publics instead of in people, that question comes up almost by itself. A mixed message skips it and tries to answer the questions of several publics at once.
Suppose an owner writes one ad aimed at residents' committees and private flat owners alike. Both sides read it, and each assumes it was written for somebody else.
Now suppose the same owner splits it into two ads, each on half the budget. No more money is spent, and both ads work.
The other side of the rule
The source does not stop at the warning. Right after it comes the positive side: when you sort the publics out and survey them, you succeed.
That sentence has two parts, and both are required. Sorting out means knowing who your publics are. Surveying means finding out what each of them wants. The booklet gives that second part, the finding out, four whole chapters.
Suppose an owner breaks the customer list into publics and then writes the same message to all of them. That is half the work done, with no result.
Now take a designer who breaks her customers into three publics and asks each one what matters most to it. She gets three different answers and writes three messages. Her service stays the same service. What changes is what she says about it to each public.
How many messages you need
The source's answer is simple. In every case, the right message goes to the right public. With a dozen publics there may be a dozen messages, each one right for its own public.
A dozen messages sounds like plenty of work, though it is less than it seems. The messages all rest on one service and one set of facts. What changes between them is what gets emphasised, and in which words.
To get there you first have to break your customers into named publics. An installer who splits his customers into residents' committees, private flat owners and building contractors has three publics, and so three languages and three messages.
Suppose he writes three versions of the same text. To the committee he stresses that residents will not be disturbed. To the flat owner, that the job takes one working day. To the contractor, a schedule the contractor can build on. The work itself is identical in all three.
Or take a consultant with two messages for one service. To sole traders she talks about stopping work in the evenings. To businesses with staff, she talks about people who know what to do even when she is not there.
The source closes the idea in a sentence that joins three things: the right message, in the right form, to the right public is what gets the result.
The sign that your message is too general
The booklet gives a simple sign. If one message could be sent unchanged to every one of your customer publics, it probably fits none of them.
The product stays the same product, and the budget stays the same budget. What changes is the question of who you are talking to each time.
The booklet has two exercises for this chapter, one for checking and one for building, plus self-check questions. From there it moves on to how you find out what each public wants to hear instead of guessing.
A message for everyone feels like a way to reach as many people as possible. In practice it leaves each public with the feeling that you are talking to somebody else.