Are You Targeting Cat Owners or Dog Owners?

Reading through the Harvard Business Review the other day, I discovered a startling piece of scientific information that content marketers need yo know: Cat owners are more cautious consumers than dog owners! Professor Xiaojing Yang of the University of Southern California explains that consumer behaviors are driven by two opposing mindsets:

• a promotion focus (eagerness, risk seeking, desire to maximize gains) – Dogs’ openness and adaptability are associated with a promotion focus.
• a prevention focus (caution, risk aversion, priority on minimizing losses – Cats’ wariness and aloofness are association with a prevention focus.

Given the prevalence of pets in our society, Yang concluded, “:they’re an important part of our socialization”. How can this understanding be put to use in marketing products and services? When the features and benefits are mostly promotion-related, Prof Yang suggests, companies might feature dogs in their marketing materials. When they have more to do with prevention, cats would be a better choice.

Calls to Action in persuasive blog posts, as we know at Say It For You, can succeed only if our content has tapped into an underlying need or “desire” on the part of the reader. In the book Well Spoken, Kevin Mayer lists possible “wants”, or persuasive appeals to help prospects be willing to move forward and take the desired action, including approval by others, cleanliness, convenience, safety, health, or safety, each goal may be understood from either a promotion focus or a prevention focus.

No blog – and certainly no blog post – can be all things to all people. Each post must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who are most likely to want to do business with you.  That way, the appeals, as well as the way they are presented, can be chosen specifically for that customer – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, even the title of each blog entry.

In your content, are you targeting cat owners or dog owners?