Talk to your audience, not at them.
Target market, target audience, buyer persona’s, etc. All words with the same meaning and same goal. Knowing your audience. But why is does knowing your audience actually matter?
THINK ABOUT IT LIKE THIS, IF YOU TALK TO A FRIEND ABOUT YOUR MATH HOMEWORK, THEY’LL ONLY BE ABLE TO HELP YOU IF THEY KNOW THE LESSON YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.
It’s the same concept in building your marketing strategy. Knowing your audience helps you figure out what content and messages people care about. If you’re selling a baby carriage and the person you’re talking to doesn’t have a baby or isn’t trying to start a family… they’re far less likely to listen to your conversation. So instead of trying to just talk about your business to everyone, it’s important to find the right people who want to listen. It all comes down to knowing your audience.
How do you actually research your audience and how do you define what matters and what doesn’t? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, the audience techniques and tactics below will be your key to taking the first steps to actually knowing your audience, and further create actions and insights that drive value, revenue, and purpose for your brand. PLUS i’ll share the top 2 secrets you need to know to build the perfect audience.
TALK TOO YOUR AUDIENCE, NOT AT THEM.
📌 SECRET TO SUCCESS #1:
Ask yourself one simple question. The marketing question that has been known for a long time—but somehow remains a secret weapon. One that you can harness. “Who are we talking to and what problem are we trying to solve for them?”
To put it plainly, in business our goal is to provide value to our customer, usually in the form of a product or good. In return, they provide value back to us usually in the form of $$$. It’s a give and take system. If you’re not showing your audience how you provide value to them, why should they listen?
Understanding your audience is way harder than slapping a few pieces of demographic information into a “persona.” Now are demographics still important? ABSOLUTELY. And I can recommend some incredible tools if you want to dig into the data more here [LINK]. However need to talk to real people to uncover the deep, burning pain points of your audience. The truth of the matter is until you know how to talk to your specific type of customer (i.e. the keywords they listen to, the vocabulary they understand, the content they care about), knowing their age/gender/interests becomes completely useless.
“ “Words—so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who knows how to combine them!””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
📌 SECRET TO SUCCESS #2:
Now, I’m by no means an expert copywriter. In fact, I absolutely loathed english class growing up. Words, grammar, they all felt meaningless in the grand scheme of life. Looking back I regret that the most. Words can be enchanting and captivating, they can open new worlds and connect two random people from across the globe. In this day and age of live media and social influence, words may actually be more important than ever before. BUT WAIT ALEX - If you’re not a copywriter, how do you ‘write copy’?? Let me let you into a little hint. Great copy doesn’t always come from great copywriters, or any other kind of marketer. The best messages come directly from the mouths of your customers.
Look at how much better it makes these messages:
“Sales made simple” → “You hate guesswork and busywork – so we made sales less work”
“Affordable time tracking payroll software” → “The only time tracking tool that pays for itself”
“Break through native reporting limitations” → “Get the reports your CRM can’t give you – without the headache it does”
Great messages use the exact words that your audience uses to describe their own problems.
That’s why knowing your audience is so important. And all you need to do is get your audience to tell you about their problems in their own words.
LET’S GET BACK TO YOUR FRIEND FROM MATH CLASS! WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY TRY TO EXPLAIN A COMPLEX PROBLEM TO YOU? YOU’LL LOSE ATTENTION RIGHT?
It’s crucial to not only understand how to talk to your audience, but also understand what they care about and how to keep them entertained so they don’t lose focus. The absolute best marketing messages make people feel like you’re reading their mind. You can state their pain points, challenges, goals, and desires so clearly that it feels like you’re living in a sweet penthouse apartment in their head. When you know your audience, you can pluck the words right out of your customers’ mouths and use it in your marketing.
🧠 TACTICS YOU CAN ACTUALLY USE TO READ YOUR AUDIENCES MIND:
Read customer reviews
Send out a survey to current customers asking them about what they like/don’t like
Ask questions in chat groups about your product
Host ‘ASK ME ANYTHING’ style instagram lives or posts on your social media page or do the same with a instagram post.
JUST TALK TO PEOPLE. Real people.
Once you know what your customers are talking about and what words they care about - you’ll then know how to talk TO them, instead of at them.
