We don’t have a crowd of thousands waiting to hear from us. There’s no clapping and chanting and begging us to deliver our message (or sell our product)!
We’re ordinary people offering mostly really ordinary products or services and trying to make them extraordinary in our own particular way. So how do we get the rock star following?
Before we even dream about those numbers and the roaring applause, we have to understand who we’re reaching out to. Who we’re targeting with our social media posts, our web site, our newsletter, our blog or all of the above.
Why this matters
- We need to understand their demographics
- How will be know which is important – age, gender, education level, income level, job level or industry?
- How will we connect in an age appropriate manner, at a suitable intellectual level and whatever else is appropriate to them and to our product or service?
- We need to know where to find them
- How will we know:
- Where they hang out (physically and digitally)?
- What places they go to, the sites they visit and the social media platforms they frequent?
- Whether they like conferences or prefer webinars?
- How do they like to consume information?
- If we don’t know where to find them, how can we connect with them?
- We need to know what they need to know
- If we don’t know and understand our customer, how do we know what to tell them?
- How do we know how to package information for them?
- How will we know the intellectual level to pitch it at, the volume they can handle and so on?
- How will we know what challenges they have that we may be able to address?
- We need to project an appropriate voice
- How will we know what voice – words, tone and expressions – will resonate with them?
- We need to build an appropriate brand
- How will we know what look and feel will appeal to them if we don’t know who they are?
- How will we choose the right fonts or the right colours or the right images for our site or our social media posts or our blog?
In conclusion
So, before we don the lycra pants and glittery shoes, we need to get to grips with our target market so that we know WHO we’re talking to, WHERE to find them, WHAT they want to hear and HOW they want to hear it.
Sounds quite simple but we often race off at a tangent and forget who we’re making all this effort for!
A few links you might find useful:
Six steps to defining your target market
How to Define Your Target Market
Steps To Identify Your Target Market