Know your target audience :  This calls for some serious rounds of boxing sessions within your mind, with market research reports and meeting the experts.  The demographics is as important as the pscychographics.  Your customer is a reality and he or she should be in front of your eyes and talking to you.  For any product  / service category this exercise is indispensable.  Delineation of the customer as graphically as possible is critical to develop the right communication strategy and roll it out. This could  be a good message targetted typically at the hep young adults and growing teens in metros. "Salsa classes from 3 pm; welcome juice free - call...".

Write out the real Benefit: Study the customer, their need, available options other than your product or service and offer something more and different.  A fast food outlet could offer a 'combo meal delivered at any location within 4 kms in 20 mins. flat' could be a good solution for many who can pick-up the stuff when one is travelling from Bandra to Juhu in the evening when returning from work.  

Study the media habits: The Media Habits of the Target Audience is the real challenge.  It might be easier to decide where to grab customer attention.  But, far more important is the decision on when to grab his / her attention.  This is getting complex going by the media habits of different age groups of customers.  Imagine a lady who is working - she sits in front of her system in the morning to spruce up her work or her presentation.  She works on the net to check her information and adds finishing touches.  She might be a mother with two kids.  She could be travelling in her own car to work.  Is this typical of all working women....the answer is sometimes it might be.  If she is your customer, you need to understand her media habits completely.  

Attention span: This is so critical that more often even if one gets the first two right, you might have a problem with this.  Attention span of many media users on any one media is dynamic, effectively due to overflow of information and a number of media vehicles.  A cricket match can be viewed on the Television or a computer or a handheld 3G / 4G phone.  Sometimes the customer picks up a message sent as SMS.  Some other times it is a quick check on the scroller.  It could even be  a telecall from a call centre.

Crisp messaging: Ensure that the message is communicated at one go and straight addressing key issue.  Never say go to my website to check the rest or read the rest in tomorrow's news paper or watch the commercial tonight.  No way.  The customer has very limited time and needs the communication to help him/her decide really fast - like it could be a glimpse on an electonic or LED board while driving to work or a hand bill at the traffic signal or it could even be a message on the FM radio.

TA - Mass / Select :  If a product is targeted at a few hundreds of high end top networth customers choose exclusive media vehicles.   On the other had, if a product has to reach a large base of customers, there are other media vehicles.  It is important to decide the size and the ROI before you draw up the plan.

Social Media :   Here again be sure of the psychographics of your customer.  If she surfs the net for news - ensure that you convey your message in not more than 50 characters.  Ensure that you have the message suitably worded for different websites.  It would be appropriate to say the right thing in the right place.  If you feel like adding a visual, not more that a thumb nail size.            

Viral marketing is measurable and cost effective.