5 Ways to Reach Your Audience

The primary challenge of marketing is to align the natural hedonistic instinct of an audience with the narcissistic necessity of a company.

There are some notable exceptions -- but modern consumerism is based on the principle that people generally want things that will bring them pleasure or reduce their pain. That's textbook psychological hedonism.

On the other hand, companies generally want the consumer to believe that their product or service is exactly what the consumer needs. The primary way they do that is to talk about how great they are.

I've mapped out a plan to address some of the ways people approach the challenge. Here's what it looks like:

• Give Them Ads You Want Them to See
• Give Them Ads They've Asked to See
• Build Relationships
• Adopt Their Goals as Yours
• Advertising as Content

Over the coming days we'll analyze these methods and some useful ways of thinking about them and what some of the benefits and pitfalls are. - Cam Beck