Marketing Resources For Manufacturers

From Omelettes to Yolk: Refining Your Targeting Strategy

Written by Mike Finn | 01 Nov 2024

It’s your first day in an all-inclusive (yay!), and you’re perusing the breakfast buffet. Instead of sticking with a few favourites, you pile your plate high with a bit of everything—regardless of if it “goes together” or not.

The result? A mishmash that leaves a lot to be desired; maybe you’d have been better with scrambled eggs and bacon.

Trying to cater to everyone at once—what I call Omelette Marketing—is too often the downfall of otherwise solid marketing campaigns. Instead of quality leads and consistent conversions, it scatters your efforts more widely and leads to diluted messages, wasted resources, and a lack of meaningful engagement.

Cracking Open Omelette Marketing

What is it?

Omelette marketing throws everything into the frying pan—email campaigns, social media, PPC, and so on—hoping to appeal to everyone, everywhere, all at once. It’s inclusive, but fundamentally imprecise.

Which is what we marketers generally want to avoid.

Why’s it messy?

Broad targeting might seem to increase your market potential (in theory), but it often really results in:

  • Diluted messaging: when you try and talk to everyone, it tends to result in no one really listening.
  • Low ROI: if you’re spreading your budget across multiple channels, you’ll be diminishing the impact of your returns.
  • Vague analytics: so… which bit worked? It can get a bit murky when your strategy is so scattered, leaving you without answers.

Theoretically, your marketing can continue along “just fine” despite these issues—you may still be generating leads and converting them into sales. But there’s a way to do these things that leads to less frustration, wasted budget, and poor-fit leads: focusing on your yolk.

Transitioning to Fried Egg Marketing®

“That’s great, Mike, but now you seem preoccupied with breakfast.” Well, not exactly.

Focusing on your yolk doesn’t just mean cooking your eggs to perfection. It’s about identifying and understanding your core audience—the segment that is your bread and butter, where 20% of your customers could bring in 80% of your business.

I go into greater detail about this in another blog post, but this is the crux of it: these are the customers who are most likely to benefit from and appreciate your offerings. You’re great at helping them resolve their pains, and they’re consistently renewing your partnership.

Here’s how you can begin making this shift:

First, Find your yolk:

Who are the clients you work best with and with whom do you get the best results from your services? Consider all the elements of their makeup as a company: firmographics, buying behaviour, organisational structure.

(This can be a daunting task, so we offer a free workshop that explains Fried Egg Marketing®)

Fixing your messaging:

Once you know who your target market is, you can begin to work on messaging designed to specifically resonate with them. Again, this can be a little daunting, and it’s easy to believe that targeting a smaller market will hurt the overall efficacy of your marketing. I get it.

But if you know your market inside-out, you’ll know how they’ll talk, their challenges, and how they typically view them. These are the pieces of the puzzle you’ll need to craft messaging that works.

Selecting your channels:

With your target market narrowed down, and your messaging in place, you can then choose your channels. You should always ask yourself one key question: do the people I want to reach hang out here?

Sharpening Your Focus

Shifting from broad to focused marketing strategies is essential for driving meaningful connections and making your (likely stretched!) marketing budget go further.

By moving towards targeting your yolk, you’ll ensure that your marketing efforts are both efficient and impactful. From there, you can scale, innovate, and iterate.

If you want to learn more about Fried Egg Marketing®, book your place on our webinar here!