Why is it important to know your audience?
- Why waste time communicating with someone else?
- Talk to people who you’re relevant to
- Every business exists to serve people; even if you’re B2B
What are mistakes businesses make with their audience?
- Thinking everyone is their audience; the more focused, the better
- Not fully understanding their audience; don’t make dumb assumptions
- Not staying focused on the audience; it’s not about you, it’s about them
How can we figure out who our audience is?
- Think about the people you serve? Who are your best customers?
- Figure out what they have in common; usually it’s the problem you help them solve
- Talk to some of them; learn about their motivations and preferences
- Look at your website users, social media followers, email subscribers
- List the demographic data; gender, age, location, income, occupation, family, etc.
What are the practical ways of staying focused on your audience?
- Creating audience personas is a helpful shortcut to processing this mass of information
- It focuses your attention on a specific character, rather than on statistics
- It’s OK to have a few different personas based on different audience segments
- Print these out and keep them visible as a reminder for who you’re reaching
- Think about the persona every time you write an email, social post, or blog
- But don’t overly generalize; keep meeting with people to keep it human
