The One Thing Every Marketer Should Know (Ep 48)

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Dawn McGruer brings you actionable digital marketing lessons every other week. Whether you are an aspiring or experienced marketer, learn the latest SEO, content marketing, social media, email marketing, and online marketing tactics that are working today.

 
Dawn McGruer:

Welcome to episode 48 of Digital Marketing Made Easy with myself, Dawn McGruer, award-winning digital marketing trainer, author and speaker. And most importantly, today’s episode is going to be about the one thing every marketer should know. And this is something that I see people losing sight of, and it’s easy to miss. It’s easy to straight off the track of what we’re supposed to be doing. But quite honestly, we need to get super focused in on this one thing.

Target Audience

Now, you may ask what is the most important thing about marketing? You may think it is all about what you’re doing every day. You might think it’s about the processes, you might think it’s about the content. Well, of course, all of those things matter, but I think the number one thing that we really need to get clear on is addressing a target audience. And I see lots and lots of marketers talking to an industry, talking to a niche, talking to the business that they’re trying to get into opposed to the actual person.

So as a marketer you really need to identify who your target audience is and humanize that person. And get super clear on the characteristics, the demographics, all of the really important things that that person has. And this goes right the way through from pains, problems, the challenges, desires. And then we have to find ways to market to them specifically so that we’re not talking at them, we’re talking with them. We’re gearing our content to the actual person, and we’re visualizing them every single day as we are creating content. Now, great marketers build the marketing strategy around customer needs. And one way you can identify these needs is by creating a buyer persona or an avatar.

My Book

Now, I took a great chunk of my book and dedicated it to this because I feel that when you create your marketing plan, it is the first thing that we need to get super focused in on. Because you may have multiple products and services, you might have multiple departments, and for each of these different aspects of your business, you will have probably different humans that you are marketing to.

Now, the easiest way to do this is think about the person in the working day and really get super clear on what they want. Now, one of the key ideas here is when you think about when you are actually creating your buyer persona, then you need to get really focused in on what it is that they actually want in their role. So you’ll be looking at things such as what do they want in terms of promotion? What do they want in terms of career progression? What do they want in terms of recognition? So are they looking for a pay rise, promotion, new job? Are they going to be rewarded if they saved huge amounts of money for the business, made the business perform better, made the employees and team more productive? Now, those are really critical because when you are marketing to these people you’ll be thinking about, okay, so what is it that they are motivated by?

What is going to be the difference of them buying my product or service and what’s going to move the needle? So we’re looking at persuasive content. And we’re looking at ideas here in terms of what’s going to get them really intrigued about what you do and more importantly, what you can do for them. So think about drilling into creating a buyer persona and think about who this person is. We can think about gender, we can think about aid, we can think about location, we can think about all of these things, but really ultimately we need to understand what this person is doing day to day. So it could be what books they’re looking at, websites they’re looking at, even what apps they’re using day to day. We have to understand what it is that our product or service could close the gap on and build that bridge. So it could be things like looking at if your product or service was going to really greatly give them a cost saving in the business, then showcasing content like a case study.

So when you get clear on your customer needs and your buyer persona, we need to think about who these amazing people are. So why are bio personas so important? Well, they’re important because people buy people. And when you are showcasing your content through social media, email marketing, advertising, you need to be actually talking as if you are addressing a person not just in industry. Now, there’s different types of personas and you can drill right down to them. I’ve included in my book, Dynamic Digital Marketing, which you can get a free copy of. All you’ve got to do is pay for shipping. If you get head on over to the website, digital and social media academy.com. Or just type into Google Business Consort, you’ll see the academy come up at the top of the tray and then just click on the resources or to buy a book.

Demographics

Now, the templates that you can use, there are different things that we’re looking for. But in essence, we want to really understand that when you create a customer avatar, there are certain things that you will know about your clients you are working for. Now, often people get confused with this and they say, well, how am I ever going to know exactly who my audience is? I don’t know who my customers are. But try and think about these customer persona aspects. So think about maybe age, gender, location, average income, the industry they’re in, education level, job title, goals, challenges, values. So what’s important to them, likes and dislikes. Now, you can drill even further into your customer avatar based on the information you know.

So a really useful way of doing this is maybe understanding more about your current customers by getting super clear on who your ideal client is. If you’ve been in business for a while, you will maybe know or have experienced that sometimes you may have worked with people who it doesn’t feel in flow with. It feels difficult. Now, these are often not your ideal clients, and maybe you’ve not gone with your gut when you kind of thought, oh, should I take this client on? I would always think about who your ideal clients are in terms of what’s easy, what’s enjoyable on each side? Are you getting amazing results working with a particular type of person? Is there a person that consistently does really well that you work with?

So when you think about your person, try and pick a picture and think about this person in terms of what they would be doing. So we might have Alex the agency owner, we might have the Allen the apprentice, we could have Tommy technology. And when we think about the challenge is we’re thinking about what they want, what their struggles are, and what would really make your product or service the best thing to absolutely solve that problem and exceed expectations. You’ve got static demographics, like obviously the age and gender and income and kind of the living conditions and things like that. But a really good one to focus on is goals. So do they want to become a senior account manager in the next three to five years? Do they want to increase their salary to 80 to 100,000 pounds? Do they want to work really heavily now so that they can kind of get this professional status and maybe hit board level?

Each person will have different motivations, and there’s twofold. There’s motivations that will obviously help the business they work for, but also there’s the personal motivations of things that will help their career and their development. But we need to be clear also on what their hobbies are and interests. What websites do they go to and use. And what social platforms are they using in their day to day, as well as actually them as a person. We need to think about any common objections that this person might have. Is there something that maybe if you’re trying to target HR professionals, that always comes up. And again, looking at things like the biggest fears, could be things like getting stuck in their job and not advancing. It could be economic pressures or recessions. It could be life passing them by too quickly.

The benefits

But once we get really clear and we’ve got the background, the challenges, their objections, their fears, their hobbies and interests, their demographics and their goals, you imagine if you had this pin to your wall and you are creating content consciously looking at all of the motivations and interests of this actual person. And having this profile is not only useful just for content but it’s also useful within the business. So I hope you enjoyed this week’s podcast and good luck with creating your buyer personas. Now, one final note on this, if you do want to delve into this more, you can find examples online of course. But go and grab the book, as I said, you can grab it from our website, just type in Business Consort. It’s a free book.

You will see in the show notes there’s a link to the actual book and all you’ve got to pay for is shipping. Now, as soon as you get the book, you’ll also get a copy of all of the templates within the book in PDF format, which means that there is a customer avatar template that you can create using the book, using the podcasts to follow along with and create your profile. Now, as soon as you do this, I promise you it will make your job as a marketer super easy. But also it will make the results even better because you’ll be so aligned to this person that as soon as they read your content, you’ll be relating to them.

They’ll resonate with what you are saying. And you’ll be building this powerful relationship that makes it easier, so that you can actually understand exactly where this person is in their journey and how to market them. So good luck and enjoy your days and weeks as a marketer. If you are an aspiring digital marketer or professional digital marketer, try and really think about… When you have written your last piece of content or you are creating your next email, try and think about one thing, what do you want your audience to think, feel, and do. Now, that’s my final tip on the podcast. And remember, subscribe to hear more tips, tools, techniques, and insights in the powerful world of online marketing and social media.

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