Narrow Your Focus For The Win

Your natural inclination is to want everyone to buy your product. You love your product (since you probably created it), and you would want everyone to purchase one... maybe two, so they can give one to a friend. Why, if everyone in the world bought one, you'd be rich! Alas, all products have a market size that is less than the total population of the planet... usually orders of magnitude less.

The real trick is to realize that you can market more effectively by narrowing your focus. Instead of writing your copy to appeal to all possible buyers, look at a subset. Perhaps instead of "all gamers" you look at where your marketing message is going. (In the good old days, that would have been a magazine that would cheerfully provide their demographics for the asking. Now, if you're targeting a web site, they may well not have such information handy... so you'll have to ask for their best guess, or make your own.) You determine that for this banner ad buy you're thinking of, the likely readers are males between the ages of 18 and 25. Then you can keep that in mind as you pick your words and images... then find some 18-25 year old males to ask if your banner ad makes sense, or if it appeals to them. (Nothing like real-world data to inform opinions.)

Don't waste your money trying to create an ad or even a press release that's trying to appeal to everyone. Know your audience, and focus on what's important to them. If you want to appeal to a different demographic, craft a message just for them. Maybe different features of your product are more important to women aged 18-25, so you highlight those features in an article directed at women of that age.