The topic of ancient aliens has become a popular one of the last decade, both as an inspiration for television shows and as a means for like minded people to meet at local conventions. The topic can be interesting from the point of view of how it introduces topics of science and history, and to an extent it incorporates a study in philosophical logical reasoning from the sense of, “if A and if B, then C must be true.” Although the technique results in some rather bizarre conclusions, it can be interesting to see how the believers become utterly convinced of the validity of their claims.
As such, it also is a great demonstration of how marketing techniques work and with a bit of study and understanding, why they work. Certain writers recognized particular needs and desires some people have, in that they want an explanation of things they don’t understand, and they want to feel like they know something special or have some form of insider knowledge. The story finds the people who have those needs and, at least to the mind of the the believer, fills those needs.
Relating to Your Terrestrial Audience
Just like the aliens story relates to the audience, your marketing story has to reach the people you hope to buy your product or service. It’s fairly easy if you work in a common industry, such as a restaurant. People already know what you provide and how it helps them, all you really need to do is convince your potential customers why your restaurant stands out and would be a better choice than the competition.
Marketing to Your Audience
The restaurant example works well as a description of how marketing works, but what if you provide a more specialized service? Perhaps you sell wholesale food products to restaurants. Your marketing plans are going to change from trying to reach the general public to making an appeal to restaurant owners and managers. There might be some crossover, if the public is aware of your product they might seek out a restaurant that serves it, but for the most part you’ll be marketing to the restaurant who will in turn advertise to people who eat out. (I can’t help thinking how cooler this discussion would be if we were talking about marketing a restaurant to extraterrestrials.)
Defining Goals and Needs
Goals and needs are a bit more than what first meets the eye. It’s easy to define your goal as making a certain profit, with a different figure as the minimum you need to stay in business. Although it might be true, a better approach is to determine a realistic attainable number of what you hope to earn, and how you plan to reach that number. When developing such a plan, you might realize a need to change aspects of what services you can provide.
The writer for the ancient aliens stories, for example, realizes to meet their goals they have to appeal to a certain amount of people. They might be an expert archaeologist with a love of history, but include topics of science, technology, and astronomy to their story to appeal to a wider range of people.
Aligning Client Goals with Your Services
Inherently included in the process of determining your own needs and goals is to understand how they will help your potential clients meet their own goals in turn. It’s important to consider the value of the services you provide based on the time and expense which goes into providing them, and balance that figure against what the service is worth to your clients.
Marketing is an area which can be difficult to determine what real value it has. It’s proven to increase the amount of clients you draw to a company, and therefore increases your potential to make the business profitable, but the extent to which it does so is not clearly definable in every case. It’s easy to track the results of a single advertisement, or determine which sales pitches reliably draw customers, but the larger picture of a marketing campaign is harder to trace as it presents the value of your services over time to your clients.
Aliens Are Real! (Or are They?)
With such marketing matters comes the reason the Ancient Aliens story is such a genius marketing concept. It touches on such a wide array of topics it’s bound to reach a wide range of people according to their personal interests. You don’t have to believe it to enjoy it, but it has a mix of fact and fiction which allows some people to play along, suspend disbelief, and just enjoy the story as fiction while others might either pretend or in fact actually believe it.
The bottom line is that the people who tell the story have been able to monetize it with advertisers who reach out to the people who watch the TV show or perhaps even attend the conventions because of the entertainment value the service provides. Whether or not little green men fly around in space doesn’t matter, what makes aliens real is the fact they generate real income for the people who sell their story, and the companies who use that platform to market their own services.
Andrew M’s most recent work history involves giving consultations and writing. Business propositions, sales pitches, marketing material and informational articles are some types of writing he conducts for his clients. Most of these are oriented toward the construction trade, architectural field, real estate market, or small business operations that Drew has extensive experience with.
