subject: What Is Your Car Audio Can Teach About Marketing [print this page] Then, all you will hear is the thud of the overworked bass speaker in the back. After he turns 30, the young driver probably wont even be able to hear that, if he continues this unwarranted assault on his ears.
That big bass bin cant handle the vocal sounds, and the front speakers would melt if they had all those thumps going through them. So the car audio separates out the various frequencies using filters, sending only the bass to the big bins in the back, and only the higher and more delicate sounds to the little speakers at the front. Both, and especially the bass, are then amplified so they are audible in the next county.
Marketers have borrowed the same terminology as a way of looking at how their business treats its customers. Marketing graduates will often talk about Filters and Amplifiers almost as if they actually understood them.
Filters
A filter in marketing speaks is anything which prevents your customer from doing business with you. Some filters are natural if you provide personal training services for example all of your clients will need to be within easy reach. This natural, geographic filter means that you are unlikely to sell to someone in another country.
Others are contructed. Mercedes Benz dealers the world over have large, bright, glassy establishments. They tend to intimidate anyone who cant afford the prices, acting as a natural, probably intentional, filter.
Filters can also be fairly subtle. If you send out a mailing by post, research shows many are discarded without even being opened. If you have a leaflet delivered, the open an envelope filter is removed, so people cant help reading it, even while they are trying to throw it away.
Amplifiers
An amplifier is anything which increases the ease of doing business with you. Any business which decides to take payment via credit cards, for example, will find the number of people who can do business with them is amplified compared to when only cash was acceptable.
Marketers probably wont admit it, but filters and amplifiers are opposites of the same thing. Removing a filter has an amplifying effect, and vice versa.
I insured my car the other day over the Internet. The first few sites I tried only supported Internet Explorer. That, at least to me, is a filter and I went somewhere a little more Fire fox friendly
Many corporate web sites insist you provide a lot of information before they will send you that free White Paper you are interested in. No doubt that information is required by someone in the business, but it filters out a lot of otherwise interested people who simply wont take the time to fill out the form and inevitably receive all the sales calls afterwards. After all, they cant be sure they are even a prospect before they read the White Paper
Apple has potentially filtered out a large portion of their target market for iTunes by only accepting credit cards. Most under 18s wont have a credit card, and they are the major buyers of chart music. The Music Store Card is an attempt to turn this filter into an amplifier.
What Filters and Amplifiers Mean to Your Marketing
Importantly, this way of thinking allows you to look at all of your marketing, online and offline, in a critical way to improve your response rates and your sales. Every time you look at any aspect of your business, ask yourself if this filters out customers you want to serve, or if you can amplify the target market by improving the process.
Perhaps you could send postcards or use leaflets instead of putting brochures in envelopes. Dont insist on a customers life history before you will allow them to buy from you. Make your web site informative and easy to use, rather than slick, cutting edge and hard to understand. If you are providing services, make it clear on your site where you are and the distance you will travel. Use local town and county names as keywords to filter out people who will never be able to buy from you, but to amplify the chance of attracting locals.
by: Luck
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