Are you marketing to individual masses or collective individuals? Do you understand the difference and how greatly it can impact your overall marketing strategies online? Many don’t and that’s not to say that your marketing is doomed for failure given a lack of understanding. Rather, I believe the greatest impact this lack of understanding will have is an inability to reach your full marketing potential from not understanding the true dynamic nature of your potential market.
Individual masses, the old way of looking at your audience — you recognize it everywhere in marketing and advertising. Marketing decisions tend to be made based on homogenous assumptions or demographic, database-driven groupings. I believe it’s one of the reasons marketers are struggling to truly tap into the mommy market, as evident in studies and social media blunders we see frequently see with this market.
Collective individuals, the necessary mindset for success on the social web – you understand that there is a difference between your potential market as a whole and the dynamic, collective groups of individuals within your market. You understand that each segment (as marketers call them) is not a homogenous piece of a bigger puzzle in their wants, needs, desires, and passions. And, that this greatly impacts your ability to reach and engage.
Understanding the difference will define your success in everything you do as a marketer leveraging the social web. There is no way to get around it. This understanding, or lack of, will manifest itself in everything you do online — from your strategies to your content. Your results will be directly correlated as well.
Here’s a scenario, real-life, name left out to protect the innocent 
Real estate staging expert, creates a home staging product that claims to help homeseller’s not only sell a home faster, but at a better price than a non-staged home. (Note, we’re not looking at the validity of the claims.) (More information about home staging.) Simple enough, right?
The Individual Masses Approach
Build a blog, slap up a landing page, build a database of all those who might be interested in home staging (ie, the entire real estate industry and all those involved in the real estate buying process), and market the crap out of it, with one message, homogenous communication, and see how it goes.
This approach assumes that the product/service solves the same problem for all stakeholders in the real estate transaction process. It also assumes that the potential market, in it’s entirety, can be reached in the same manner.
The expert has invested in an online presence that is a one-size-fits all, likely has hired expensive, over-paid copywriters to create “persuasive” copy to sell, sell, sell — and has likely invested in expensive masterminds that claim to simplify the social media marketing process by providing a step-by-step, general approach.
The result? Hit and miss sales, hard selling, and a whole lot of expense and work for little, inconsistent return. It’s much like fisherman casting out nets, hoping and praying they catch the right fish.
The Collective Individuals Approach
After observing and analyzing the real estate transaction process, there is a clear understanding of the different stakeholders and their role in the potential connection and sale of the expert’s product/service. You understand that a home staging product will need to take into consideration:
- While the core solution for all stakeholders on the selling side (including the broker, realtor, seller) is to sell a house faster and at a higher price, the means to this end are likely very different. The same product you package for sellers (who’s intrinsict needs are very different from the realtor or broker), will likely not appeal to realtors and brokers in the same way — their motivations are very different and the processes that they employ are very different in achieving the same result.
- Your best point of sale is likely not the home sellers themselves, but the realtors and brokers who have considerable influence over the homesellers. Any approach that only sells directly to home sellers, will likely fail because there is a clear lack in understanding the relationships involved between all stakeholders.
- Your approach in communicating and engaging with all stakeholders, according to the influence over the buying decision will need to be very different. A one-size-fits-all landing page, carefully crafted by any copywriting or direct marketing professional, will ALWAYS under-perform when presented to the dynamic segements that are your potential market.
- You will also need to consider deliveryof the product. For the sake of argument, IF you could sell directly to all these groups — would it really be the best approach to sell the same product in the same format to all segments of your market? In other words, would a downloadable blueprint for home staging appeal to realtors and brokers in the same way it would to homesellers, and vice versa? Is it possible that the digital product might not work for either, or that a workshop would work better for realtors and brokers, who typically work in collectives — where buy-in of value must be perceived at all levels in the company?
How about this… Could you leverage the relationships brokers and realtors have with home sellers to actually reach all stakeholders on their own terms, for a more effective sales strategy? Meaning, is it even feasible to sell directly to homesellers without taking into the consideration their relationships with others in the real estate transaction process?
The point is, effective marketing today requires a deep understanding of your potential market and those who influence and affect your market. Without it, you could be missing so much potential in your results. No market, except super, uber niche markets, are homogenous in their perspectives of a problem or the solutions they are likely to need.
Are you basing your social web activities on the right understanding of your market?
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… looking forward to connecting with you!
Maria 
About the Author...
Maria Reyes-McDavis is a colossal geek brainiac, certified genius IQ with university degrees in Finance, Economics, Business Management and an MBA. Maria has served over 300 pro-level, digital marketing clients as founder of online marketing firm Digital Peas & Carrots. Maria is Founder and Editor of Hyphenated Americans, a conservative politics blog and Proverbs 31 Project an online women's ministry. Most importantly, Maria is a wife to her king, mother of 3, lover of basketball (Go Lakers & Clippers!), classic cars and is currently training for professional women's roller derby!
