How to Identify an Audience You Can Profitably Reach

I know all about selecting the correct target market for a product or service, but I've never seen a methodology for deploying for an audience that I can AFFORD. I wonder how much money I've wasted? I better not think about it too much. 

Bar & Line: How to Identify Your Audience, 2020-Mar-19 by Duncan Geere

You have limited resources to reach people, and you need to deploy them carefully to maximize your impact.

By identifying the goals of your project, you can immediately narrow down your audience further. Think about who's most likely to be do the things that you want them to do - who'll have the time, inclination, and ability to act on the information you're sharing. These people are much more valuable to you than those who don't.

For example, following on from the last step, you're looking for people among the aforementioned groups who regularly donate to charity, and who actively use social media platforms. These are your core targets. They're interested in your subject, and they have the ability to do something about it. Sure, maybe people outside of those groups can do something with your information, but they're less of a priority because the likelihood they'll act is lower.

How can you reach them?

Finally, consider how you can reach these core targets. What tools and resources do you have at your disposal to get your work in front of their eyes?

This is the beginning of a full marketing and PR strategy, of course, but it's important to consider here because if there's no realistic way of getting your work in front of a particular group of people then it's not worth wasting any time targeting them. Concentrate instead on what you can do.

How to build a marketing newsletter that's an asset, not an expense

We make a mistake when we think of a marketing newsletter of 'news' about our company or general 'news' which we share with our customers to persuade them buy. Newsletters ought to drive people to the long-term value they can find at your web site. First, the web site has to contain useful content. Then social media and newsletters are used to help people find the information or tools they can use. 

WebInkNow: Are You Creating Marketing Assets or Just Generating Marketing Expenses? 2019-Oct-17 by David Meerman Scott

For example, if you spend $5,000 in a given month on advertising via Google AdWords, the only thing you are buying are the resulting clicks of your ads appearing against the important phrases people search on to find your business. But as soon as you stop paying, your clicks stop completely. This is the classic example of a marketing expense.

However, if you spend $5,000 in a given month to hire an agency or a freelance journalist to write a bunch of interesting blog posts relating to important phrases people search on to find your business, you will have assets that live on forever that will drive people to your content from the search engines for years to come. The content will have value many years after it has been paid for.

I started writing my blog fifteen years ago. Every day I get a few hundred inbound clicks from Google because people find my work as they are searching. Posts I wrote many years ago rank highly in the search engines. This blog is an essential asset of my business.

My free ebooks have been downloaded millions of times. They are also an important asset of my business.

My blog posts and ebooks are assets that I own! They were “paid for” years ago!

Restart

Over the next few weeks I will be inventorying my assets and strategizing my next move. 

Storytelling tips from the Nielsen Norman Group

As an analytical thinker, storytelling has always been a struggle for me. I tend to organize information differently than storytellers. But throughout my career it has become increasingly important. Anytime I find a good teaching tool for storytelling, I try to work with it and incorporate its lessons. 

I especially value the reminder here to pair our stories with artifacts. If we handle it correctly, a very complex story can be embedded in a single image or token. 

Nielsen Norman Group: 6 Rules for Persuasive Storytelling, 2019-Apr-28 by Rachel Krause

Stories help us explain difficult concepts.

Giving additional context helps our audience connect with a concept. This additional context can be in the form of behaviors, emotions, reactions, motivations, or goals. Unlike a flow chart or artifact, a narrative allows the audience to understand the reasons behind users’ actions; they remind our audience members that they are not the user.... 

Stories allow us to form a shared understanding.

Thinking about how to build a product usually involves feature lists and backlogs. Stories bring user pain points and goals to the forefront of the conversation and help teams create a shared language of why they’re building a product or feature and whom it benefits. These stories can also be used to rally around a product vision, painting an image of how life could be better with that product.

6 Rules for Persuasive Storytelling

1. 1. Adapt your vocabulary to match your audience.

   2. Appeal to the needs of your audience.

   3. Back up your points with real data. 

   4. Focus on the entire omnichannel experience, inside and outside the interface. 

   5. Pair your story with an artifact for memorability and alignment.

   6. Follow up with a summary. 

Look at ways to influence the buying process instead of the buyer

Gartner has found three steps universal in the business buying process. They usually occur in the following order, but not always. 

• Interest is aroused by discussions with colleagues
• Research is done using independent experts
• Vendor information is gathered. 

Advertising doesn't make much of a difference unless it's newsworthy and spurs discussion. 

Gartner Blog Network: The First Three Steps in B2B Buying, 2019-Feb-26 by Hank Barnes

As a vendor, you can not control the buying process. Even if you generate the initial interest, the buying team will be doing lots of other activities, independent of you. But there are things you can do:

1. Provide ways to facilitate sharing information among the buying team. And look at your content from the perspective of the ease of sharing (and really conveying the information) across the buying team.
2. Help teams discover influencers that follow your space. And encourage them to seek them out (and yes, you should guide them to independent influencers that have a favorable view of your company and your products/services–when the customer situation fits.
3. Finally, provide a mix of ways for prospects to discover you to kick off their process. Provide compelling insights that get them to think about things in new ways. Then encourage them to validate with an influencer or discuss internally. 

When sales people have to create change

When launching a new product or service, the selling organization must have the time and incentive to go slowly and learn as much about the prospects and their challenges as they do about the new offering. 

Harvard Business Review: How to Sell New Products, 2018-Nov/Dec, by Michael Ahearne and Thomas Steenburgh

Early in the cycle, not only must the salesperson provide the right product information, but customers must feel they have the right information. That involves establishing trust and demonstrating a deep understanding of the customer’s challenges. Later in the cycle, the salesperson must help the customer understand, assess, and manage the risks and the people issues associated with change. Too few companies help salespeople learn to do this.

Sales teams would be better off spending their time developing a psychological profile of the ideal customer. What traits suggest that a prospect might be willing to adopt a new way of doing business? What behavioral clues signal that he or she is serious about making a purchase rather than simply learning about a new technology? Does the prospect’s organizational culture support learning and change? For prospects who best fit the profile, the sales team should map out all the steps that will need to be taken—and all the people who will need to be met. This exercise is creative in nature, because the goal is to envision what should be new and different in the sales process. 

Unlearning marketing

I see a lot of problems in marketing, but I hadn't been seeing them as problems of "unlearning." Now I will.  

Harvard Business Review: Why the Problem with Learning Is Unlearning, 2016-Nov-3 by Mark Bonchek

We need to unlearn the push model of marketing and explore alternative models. For example, instead of using relationships to drive transactions, we could be building brand orbits and embedding transactions in relationships. Instead of customers being consumers, we could have relationships with them in a variety of roles and social facets. Beyond delivering a value proposition, we could be fulfilling a shared purpose.