Breadcrumb marketing: Thinking big by getting small

Breadcrumb marketing uses small and focused messages

By Chris Lenois

There's a tinge of irony to be found in the current television ad campaign by AT&T Wireless, featuring a well-dressed man conducting a series of focus groups with young children. The motif enables the telecom provider to present different facets of its service as bigger, faster, and better -- with the implication that such benefits are overwhelmingly obvious even to kindergartners.

The technique, however, demonstrates the power of keeping one's messaging small and focused -- a lesson that many savvy marketers have adopted in recent years.

Internet technology and social media have increasingly scattered our consumer attention span to the point that we are as easily distracted as those six-year-olds being polled in the commercials. Yet it has also fueled a childlike zeal for discovery and rewritten the rules for what makes an effective marketing campaign.

"In a traditional advertising centric world, we're taught to tell the entire story in one sitting -- whether that be in an ad, a TV spot, radio advertisement or direct mail piece," notes Tom Martin on his blog, Positive Disruption. Martin is a proponent of what he and many other marketing professionals refer to as "Breadcrumb Marketing." 

The name is taken from the "Hansel and Gretel" fairy tale, where the children dropped crumbs of bread to help them find their way back home. In this concept, messaging is broken into smaller bits designed to lead the consumer down the path toward the campaign goal.

The practice offers several advantages in both execution and outcome, as it:

Sharpens messaging. Marketers should always be paring down copy anyhow, trying to find the most concise way to convey the value of their product or service. But it becomes a necessity when your space is limited to a postcard mailer or a 140-character tweet.

Helps control costs. Concentrate your marketing outreach on driving traffic to your website or social media channels, where you can offer a more complete story with less expense than trying to say everything in a single print or television ad.

Integrates marketing channels. The breadcrumb approach really enables you to tailor the message to the medium and sets up opportunities to measure the effectiveness of individual outlets as guides of your audience down the trail. It's similar to a teaser campaign in this way. Think about what the payoff is going to be at the end and what makes it compelling enough to keep them following as many of the crumbs as possible.

Increases consumer engagement. Consumer engagement is the Holy Grail of marketing in the new millennium. The online environment provides almost infinite opportunities for interaction. Use the breadcrumbs to lead them into conversations with your company representatives. Maria Pergolino of Marketo calls it the "foundational truth" of today's marketing landscape. "Businesses that put the time and effort into networking and talking with their customers will reap the benefit of happy leads," she writes. "This will result in a group of satisfied customers who will go out and spread the word (and more crumbs) through the forest."

About the author: Chris Lenois is a freelance writer on small business topics for Vistaprint, a world leader in marketing products like custom postcards and business cards to help small businesses reach their audiences. Chris has contributed articles to many newspapers and publications, including Wired and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

* Image attribution: Zelda F. Scott; GFDL, CC BY-SA 3.0