One of the four P’s of Marketing is Place. Place generally refers to where you will sell your products or services. But I think it is also extremely relevant for where you put out your messaging. Once you determine who your target audience is, you need to develop messaging appropriate for that audience and deliver it in the right places. Your messaging could be print advertising, press releases, community calendar postings, etc.

If your target audience reads the newspaper, you need to tailor your message to print media and pitch to newspaper reporters and/or editors. If your target audience watches television, then you want your message(s) delivered through TV outlets. For TV, it is important that your message contains a visual element. If your audience is comprised of radio listeners, you need to determine what they listen to and at what times of day, so that your message can be delivered to the right type of station at the right time of day. Here you need to remember that visuals are not going to be important, though many stations will ask for a photo to accompany your story on their web page.

For those whose audiences are web and social media users, you need to tailor your messaging to the platform(s) where your audience can be found or where your audience looks for information. Options can include online news sites and a variety of social media platforms. If your messaging is directed towards business people, LinkedIn is appropriate and your messaging should be business-like. If your audience is actively engaged on Facebook, the “atmosphere” is more casual and there are many ways to engage your audience. Posts, photos, contests, ads, business pages – are all vehicles on Facebook that you can use to reach out to your target audience.

Twitter is becoming more and more popular for people who are looking for information. Hash tags (#) help Twitter users find information and post comments on an endless number of topics. You can also share photos. The thing to remember with Twitter is that you are limited to 140 characters in your posts. So you have to really be brief and to the point with your messaging on Twitter.

If your business is extremely visual and creative in nature, consider Pinterest. You can post all types of ideas and photos of your products to share with all of your followers.

So before you begin to put out messaging about your products/services be sure to do your marketing homework. Know what it is that you are really selling; identify who your target audience is; become familiar with their pain points; develop messages that are appropriate to your audience and will tell them how you are going to solve their “pain”; and deliver the messages to your target audience in the place(s) they look to for information.