Clyde Barrow was a bank robber – partners in Bonnie and Clyde, who robbed banks, restaurants, and gas stations from 1929 to 1934.

Allegedly, asked why he robbed banks, he said “Because that’s where the money is.”

Now I’m not advocating a life of crime, but he had a point. If you are going to have a successful business, you need to go where the money is.

Many businesses do “shotgun” marketing. Advertising to anyone and everyone, because some of them will be prospects, wastes an awful lot of money on people who are never going to buy.

What makes spam so obnoxious is the fact that it wastes your time. Well, if they are selling something you need or want, it isn’t spam. It’s not a waste of time. It’s doing you a favor.

But with modern technology it is often so easy to send out a huge volume of emails, or run Google Ads everywhere. It’s the lazy way to do it, but it has a price beyond the cost of the ad itself..

Low response rates to emails can get you labeled as a spammer and block delivery of your emails to those who DO want what you’re selling.

Untargeted Google Ads are by design, more expensive and can result in your ads not being visible at all.

Other examples are obvious. If you are mailing postcard, you’re probably paying upwards of 50 cents per piece. If they are going to the wrong people you might as well just light that money on fire or flush it down the toilet.

So “where the money is,” to a marketers especially, means where the money is that might buy your product or service.

There’s a reason why a lot of people try to sell to rich people. Someone who might find your prices too steep, might consider it chump change if they were wealthier.

But trying to sell to the wealthy is also tough work, because everyone wants to sell to them. There’s a lot more competition to sell to BMW owners than Ford owners.

In the business-to-business world, there’s a lot more competition to sell to dentists and lawyers than to sell to plumbers.  Yes, I know plumbers can make a lot of money.

And home improvement workers may not have as much money, but there are a lot of them.

There’s a key point to all this. Know your market. A lot of waste of marketing money occurs because people don’t study and survey their potential markets.  Then you don’t have to “shotgun” your marketing and you  can make an intelligent decision to go high volume – low-price, or low volume – high price.

SO take a tip from Clyde Barrow. Go where the money is. But make sure you understand what that means for YOUR business.