Let’s talk about one of the most important considerations for any marketing or business strategy. This is something that will really grease the wheels when it comes to making more money, creating compelling content and finding fulfillment in your business.
It’s a classic question: which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Sadly, most businesses choose wrong.
A Tale of Two Companies
Let’s take a peek into the boardroom of Acme, Inc. to see what I mean.
I have the best idea! I know exactly what our customers need. Listen to this. Instead of producing our widgets in just one color — blue — we’ll now offer a selection of 15 colors so it’ll appeal to more people. We’ll have an option for everyone!”
Quick! Let’s put together a nifty ad campaign to highlight the new marketing message. If we just let everyone know that we have the their favorite color, they’ll buy. It’s sure to skyrocket our sales.
Months later, after the ad budget has been blown, sales are still flat. Everyone’s back in the boardroom scratching their heads and feeling a little sheepish.
What would have been a more intelligent approach to this process? To find out, let’s join another the meeting already in progress over at WizBang Enterprises where the CEO is addressing the senior staff.
We started this company with the mission of bringing the best widgets to college kids. We want to give those students the widgets that they need to do well in school. We recently gathered info from Twitter and our community forums that show we need to re-think our assumptions.
Previously we thought our customers wanted a wider selection of colors to choose from. However, it seems the biggest problem is that they are having a hard time setting the widgets up which means they don’t get used. This is hurting word-of-mouth marketing and increasing the rate of product returns.
Starting immediately, we’re going to produce instructional videos to include with all of our widgets. In addition, we’ll publish them online as a podcast for potential customers to watch. By educating our market and solving their key problem, we project sales will again rise.
Give Them What They Want, Not What You Think They Need
Let’s compare and contrast these two scenarios.
Acme: Assumes what their customers need.
Wizbang: Reaches out to their market to find out what they want.
Acme: Tries to appeal to everyone.
Wizbang: Defines their market specifically and caters the offer directly to them.
Acme: Started with the message, then went in search of a market to deliver it to.
Wizbang: Started with the market, then found the right message for that market.
Are you a Wizbang or an Acme?
Most Companies Do It Backwards
Effective marketing is about matching the message to the right market — not the other way around.
Too many companies fall madly in love with their message/product/service before they ever consider the audience. It’s just like our English teachers taught. Define the audience before you write a single sentence of the essay.
Put into business terms: carefully choose a starving market, then give them exactly what they’re hungry for.
FIRST, choose the market THEN refine the message to match.
Think Narrower to Grow Bigger
When we first started Internet Business Mastery, we created content for anyone and everyone interested in online marketing — the Fortune 500 marketing exec, the small business marketer, the newbie internet entrepreneur…anyone. By trying to cater to everyone, we catered to no one.
Our audience growth hit a plateau. We had a hard time figuring out how to give our audience what they wanted.
Finally we made what seemed like a counter-intuitive move. In order to grow, we had to narrow our audience. We refined the definition of our target market to only include people stuck the 9-to-5 grind looking for a way out by starting a internet business.
Since then Internet Business Mastery has grown into a six-figure a year business. By refining our audience definition, we amplified our results. We helped more people. We made more money. We created better content.
Audience Amplifier
This is the start of a special series on how to be a Wizbang business and not an Acme. I’ve outlined a step-by-step process for defining your target market to amplify your results. This is a process is the first thing I go through with high-end clients that have paid thousands of dollars to consult with me.
At the end of the series I’ll also post a worksheet that you can use to regularly walk through the process. It’s a good idea to think , whether you’re just starting out or have been marketing and producing content for years
In the next installment we’ll talk about having a Red Velvet Rope Policy. Talk to you soon!
November 5th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Great point, but it takes a lot of discipline to implement – even when you know it’s true.
We all know that the vast majority of decisions are emotion based, but we tend to think of this as describing our customer’s behavior, not our own. We capitalize on it by using emotional appeals as the foundation for our sales letter content.
It’s ironic that we often don’t recognize this very human trait in ourselves, and that it applies just as strongly to the choices we make regarding our sales strategy.
Thanks Jason for pointing out that we as marketers are no different. Our emotions greatly influence our own decision making processes. We are not immune, but perhaps we will be more aware of it, and therefore make more logic based decisions going forward.
Thanks for this insightful post.
Steve S.
Red Arrow Publishing LLC
November 5th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Excellent Jason. Entertaining and educational. I agree and always consult on defining what your market is asking before you determine how and what to sell them. Many clients approach me with great ideas that they want to pursue.
The the dead give-away for their possible idea failure is when I hear “no one is doing it” or “its never been done before”. So we analyze, research and perform a survey analysis to determine if the idea is viable and in demand.
Where I found most companies struggle when needing to expand their business, is to actually implement a decent discovery program to determine their target markets problems and questions in order to deliver exactly what they want.
This where listening and reading between the lines becomes a crucial skill in order to really know your target market.
All the best,
Jayson
http://groundupmedia.com
http://wpcoop.org
November 5th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I’m definitely at the point of trying to cater to everyone and connecting with no one. I’m looking forward to the rest of this series to see if I can grow out my plateau/ funk.
November 6th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Thanks Jason,
While my ‘business’ is writing books (so far one, Impossible Dreams, and publishing, I have been trying to sell to everyone and coming up short. I can see that ‘giving our audience what they want’ (and not assuming anything) while ‘narrowing the focus – our audience’ would be more productive.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the series, particularly the worksheet as my book is itself a workbook, the importance of taking brain strategies and actually placing them on paper cannot be over emphasized; it helps to connect the dots and provides a clearer picture of the finished idea.