Tanya Brody

Copywriter | Marketing & Optimization Consultant | Customer Advocate

Why it is Incredibly Important that You Know Your Audience and How to Talk to Them

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I just finished the launch of my new email course, Build a Relationship with Your Audience Through Email.

During this launch, I used a standard framework for promoting the course via my email list. I sent a lot more emails than my usual cadence. (To my credit, I did warn my list there would be more emails.)

Those emails were also much more focused on selling my course and getting people to go to the landing page to sign up. Normally, my emails are informational and have a single link at the bottom  with an offer to sign up for a free 30-minute consultation about an upcoming marketing project.

A friend of mine responded to one of my launch emails, concerned that “this wasn’t like me” and “had I been hacked?”

[Read more…]

The Top 6 Reasons to Have a Facebook Page for Your Business

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facebook-page

I just created a Facebook page for my copywriting business. You’re welcome to check it out here. I haven’t gotten a lot up there yet, but it’s a good start.

I decided it was a good idea to have a separate Facebook page for my business. And after doing a bit of research, I figured I should write a blog post about why it’s a good idea to have a Facebook page for your business. So here are the top 6 reasons I discovered for having a Facebook business page.

1. Increase Your Reach

A personal profile limits you to 5,000 friends. Most people don’t have that many Facebook friends, so it’s not a big deal. But for your business, you want to be able to reach everyone who may be interested in what you’ve got to offer.

When you have a separate Facebook page for your business, your posts will reach folks who have liked your page. Yes, this is about the same as having a personal profile.

A personal Facebook post limits the audience who can see it. For instance, I limit all of my posts to my friends list. But once your post hits your fans’ pages, it’s there for all the world to see.

Now, when I tell the world about my new blog post (about Facebook pages) on my new Facebook page, it will show up on their newsfeeds. But instead of exposure being limited our shared friends, it will be seen by all of their friends. And if some of those folks share my post with their friends, it will go even further.

So without a lot of effort on my part, my blog post, my Facebook page and my business have been exposed to a whole new audience of people. You can do this for your business too.

2. Target Your Audience

Facebook has 1.7 billion monthly users. That means 1/7th of the planet’s population logs into Facebook once a month. Most do it daily. That’s a huge audience! Way more people than you want, and certainly more people than will be genuinely interested in your products or services.

Facebook has one of the most sophisticated demographic tracking systems around. They collect a heck of a lot of data on their users. (That whole thing about “if the product is free, you are the product, it’s true.)

Yes, this feels a bit “big brother-ish” but as a marketer, this is to your advantage. Because you can target, down to very detailed demographics, who you want to see your Facebook posts. This is a great thing for you, because:

• You spend less money on advertising.
• You reach people who are more likely to become your customers.

I haven’t done it yet, but there’s a button on all of the posts on my new Facebook page that says “Boost Post.” That button lets me customize my audience to region, gender, age and interests.

So if you own a vintage 50’s malt shop in Berkeley, CA, you can target your audience to people who live in a specific radius from your restaurant, like ice cream and are interested in vintage stuff from the 50s. (Yes, you really can get that detailed.)

3. Drive More Traffic to Your Website

You spent a lot of money building that website. And it’s where people can get detailed information about your products or services. So use your Facebook page to drive more traffic to your website.

If you visit my Facebook page, you’ll notice that I’ve already posted some of my older blog posts to the page. I wanted something for people to look and click through to. I’ve already gotten more views on my blog posts from my Facebook page.

If you’re running a special on a certain product, your Facebook page is a great place to promote that, with a link back to the product page on your website where customers can buy the product.

If you’re going to be at a special event, post a link to your events page, where people can find more information about where you’ll be and what you’re doing.

4. Gather More Leads

Yes, you can collect email addresses on your Facebook page. There are a variety of ways you can do this:

  • Use the button feature on your Facebook page to get people to sign up for your mailing list. (Choose the “Sign Up” option.)
  • Direct site visitors to a sign-up form or squeeze page on your website.

Why should you do this? I mean, after all, you’ve got all of these Facebook likes. Doesn’t that duplicate your efforts? No. What if, for some reason beyond your control, your Facebook page was suddenly and irrevocably deleted? How would you communicate with your fans?

If you have their email addresses, you can tell them what happened, let them know where to find you from now on, and stay in touch.

5. Get Messages from Interested Customers

One of the pitfalls of personal profiles on Facebook is that unless someone has already Friended you on Facebook, they can’t send you a direct message. So if you’re using your personal profile and a potential customer messages you to ask a question, you may never know about it because the message disappears into the “Message Requests” folder in your Messages section.

I just checked that section and discovered a message from a potential customer who wrote to me in April. I never would have known it was there, had I not written this blog post.

By contrast, I got a notification on my new Facebook page about a message from a friend who wants to talk about having me help her promote her book. Because I was able to see that notification, I responded right away and we’ve set up an appointment to talk.

6. Look More Professional

Okay, I confess, I’ve been posting announcements about my new blog posts to my personal Facebook page. And my friends are all very tolerant of my doing this. Some of them even share them with their friends. (Thank you very much to those of you reading this who have helped promote my blog posts and my business.)

But let’s face it. My personal Facebook wall is covered in silly cat videos, funny stuff my friends have shared with me, and personal commentary. My clients and potential clients don’t need to see this stuff. Nor will they be able to, unless they’ve friended me on Facebook. (Some of them have.)

So having a Facebook page that is specifically for your business means you can post announcements about your business, as well as share articles and opinions that you think will interest your audience. You can ask questions with polls. You can build a professional relationship with your potential clients. (And yes, you can post the occasional cat video.)

Go Create a Facebook Page for Your Business

I hope the 5 reasons above have convinced you that creating a Facebook page for your business is a good idea. So if you don’t already have one, go make one. If you do have one, make sure you’re paying attention to it and posting to it regularly

Do you have a Facebook page for your business? If not, why not? Please tell me about it in the comments.

Why Your Marketing Needs to Be Conversational

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Conversational

“Be conversational. What does that even mean?” I hear you ask.

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary it means:

  • An informal talk involving two people or a small group of people: the act of talking in an informal way.
  • Something that is similar to a spoken conversation.

I’m going to focus on that second definition: “Something that is similar to a spoken conversation.” Obviously, you and I aren’t talking right now. You’re reading words on a screen that I wrote earlier. But because of the style and tone of my writing, you may feel like we’re having a conversation.

Why?

Well, to start with, I used a question I thought you might ask as the opening line to this blog post. Second, I’ll use the words “you” and “I” a lot in this post. Third, I assume that you’re interested in what I have to say. So I write about the topic as though there was a back-and-forth rapport between us.

What does this get me? Well, a few things. It gets your attention, it keeps you reading, and a conversational style makes it easier for you to digest and process what I’m trying to get across.

Think about the last time you had to read something written in a formal writing style: It was probably very dry, boring and hard to wade through. Your attention probably wandered a lot and you had to drag it back to focus on the page, as much as you didn’t want to. You probably wanted to be just about anywhere else than sitting there, reading that thing, whatever it was.

Now think about the last time you read something written in a conversational style, like this blog post. It probably grabbed your attention and lead you through the entire piece. You probably really enjoyed whatever it was you read. You probably mentioned that piece to a friend later on, because you enjoyed it and you remembered the point it made.

You received a benefit from reading that piece.

Now turn that around and look at your current marketing. How do your customers view the tone of your marketing? If your marketing tone is formal and dry, your potential customers may not be getting the benefit you’re trying to give them. They may not hear that you have the solution to their problem, so they may not become customers.

If your marketing tone is conversational, your potential customers are more likely to get that benefit. They’re also more likely to become your customers.

So how do you make that happen? Here are a few techniques you can use.

Talk to Your Customer

I wrote a different blog post about this a few weeks ago, but it always bears repeating. You’ll notice I do that throughout this blog post. I’m talking directly to you, not at you.

More importantly, I’ve made this post about you. You are the focus. You receive the benefit. You find the solution to your problem.

Notice a pattern here? The word “you.”

Use it throughout your copy and your potential customers will feel like you’re interested in them and their problems. (Which is what you want, since you have the solution to their problems.)

For more on this subject, please check out the other blog post, I think you’ll enjoy it.

Use Contractions

I know. It goes against every rule of grammar you learned in grade school. But when we have a conversation, we use contractions all the time. I’ve used them throughout this post. (See, I just did it again.)

Using contractions does two things:

  • It makes your words more accessible: Some people get hung up on the formality of “they are” versus “they’re” and they tune out.
  • It lowers your Flesch-Kincaid score: I’ll talk more about this later. But it’s a good thing, and it’s important.

Write in the Active Voice

“What does that mean?” I hear you cry.

This is another one of those weird grammar things that you probably internalized in grade school and don’t even realize you do (if you do it).

Here’s an example of writing in the active voice:

  • Sarah kicked the ball.

Sarah is the focus of this sentence. Sarah takes action in relation to the ball.

Here’s an example of writing in the passive voice:

  • The ball was kicked by Sarah.

The ball is the focus of the sentence. Sarah, though she was the one kicking the ball, is passive.

What does this mean for your marketing?

Active language sounds more compelling. Therefore, it’s more likely to get your customers to… well… take action. And since that’s what you want them to do, write in the active voice.

Write to Your Audience’s Reading Level

As I’ve mentioned before, I used to write marketing copy for lawyers. The most common complaint I heard was, “This isn’t sophisticated enough. My clients are smarter than this, and other lawyers will think I’m stupid if this is on my website.”

Okay. I agree, to a point. If your audience is particle physicists, write to particle physicists. They’ll get what you’re trying to say.

But (to use the lawyer example again) if your audience is people who may or may not have a high school degree and need a lawyer because they’ve been arrested, you need to write in language they’ll understand. They won’t understand legal jargon and complicated ideas. They’ll skip right over your website and go on to someone who “gets them.”

“Okay, so how do I write to my audience’s reading level?” You ask.

  • Use simple words: This is the difference between “citation” and “ticket” (to go back to the lawyer example). You need to use the same vocabulary as your audience.
  • Use contractions: Using contractions makes a sentence easier to read for most people.
  • State your message simply, clearly and to the point: Don’t clutter up your writing with fancy words or ideas that don’t support your message. That will just confuse your audience. Clear messaging is easier to understand and will result in more people saying “yes” to your marketing.
  • Keep your Flesch-Kincaid Score at 8 or lower: Told you I’d get back to this. The Fleisch Kincaid score (or scale) indicates the grade level of a piece of writing. This blog post has a Fleisch Kincaid score of 5.5, which means someone who is half way through 5th grade can understand it.

“How do I figure out my Flesch-Kincaid score?”

Well, if you use Microsoft Word, it’s easy:

  • Go to the menu at the top of the screen and click on “Word.”
  • When you see the dropdown menu, click on “Preferences.”
  • When the Preferences box pops up, click on “Spelling and Grammar.”
  • In the Spelling and Grammar window, look toward the bottom of the list and check the box that says, “Show readability statistics.”

From now on, you’ll see this box after you run your spell check:

FK Score Box

The readability statistics are at the bottom of the list. The higher your Flesch Reading Ease score, and the lower your Flesch-Kincaid grade level, the easier it is to read your writing.

If you don’t use Word, I recommend the Hemingway Editor. It includes the readability statistics and it points out which sentences are hard to read. It also helps you remove adverbs and complicated words, and it shows where you’ve used the passive voice.

“But isn’t writing to my audience’s reading level like talking down to them?” You may wonder.

No. Not at all. Most marketing copy is written at a 7th grade reading level or lower. People are busy. They’re not going to take the time to read something they can’t understand right away.

Ernest Hemingway wrote at a 4th grade level. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote around the 6th grade level. Seth Godin writes at the 7th grade level. Don’t believe me? Check out this chart of Flesch-Kincaid scores for various writers.

Go Forth and Be Conversational

Now that you have a bunch of tools to improve the tone of your marketing, go use them! I’ve put together the Conversational Language Checklist for you, so you remember to include each of these tools in your writing from now on.

Get the Conversational Language Checklist

As always, if this seems like it’s too much for you to handle, I’m happy to help you with your marketing projects. As you can see, I have the conversational language thing down.

Do you use conversational language in your marketing? If not, why not? Tell me about it in the comments section.

Why Your Company Needs a Style Guide

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StyleGuide

I firmly believe that every company, regardless of size, should have a style guide. This may sound like an extra layer of work that small businesses really don’t need to deal with at “this stage,” but I disagree.

It’s better to establish a style guide now, while you’re creating your voice and brand. If you wait until you’re well-known, you’ll have so many different practices in place, it might be hard to agree on a set of guidelines that everyone can follow.

So the first question you may have is…

What is a Style Guide?

A style guide is a document that sets the writing standards for everyone in your organization. It covers everything from the tone and voice of the company’s writing style to formatting and hex codes for the company’s chosen brand colors.

Please note: There is a difference between a content style guide and a design style guide. A content style guide refers specifically to anything written to promote the company. A design style guide refers to logos, brand color pallets, typography, icon sets, etc.

There are places that content and design style guides intersect, like pallet colors, formatting and whether your company uses a ™or ® in its logo or next to the company’s name in all marketing collateral.

Because I am a copywriter, I am talking about a content style guide in this article.

What Does a Style Guide Do?

A style guide acts as a reference point. New writers should review it and everyone should have a copy or a link handy. That way if they can’t remember whether the company uses the Oxford comma, they have somewhere to look.

A style guide also:

  • Keeps your company’s tone, voice and messaging consistent across all platforms.
  • Helps maintain your company’s brand identity.
  • Shows quality and professionalism.
  • Helps you write more effective content.

Why Do You Need a Style Guide?

Aside from the reasons above…

It puts your audience first

Let’s face it, everything you do in your marketing should be about communicating effectively with your audience. That includes your style guide. You should be shaping your style guide around what your audience wants from you and your products, as well as the problems you’re solving for them.

Your style guide will document the language and tone you use, your overall messaging and how and where you communicate with your audience.

It establishes your company’s voice

Every writer has their own “voice” and that will come across in your marketing. But having a style guide will give all of your writers a common voice to write in. Think of a choir. Every singer has his or her own unique sound, but when they sing together and listen to each other, you hear one overarching “voice” that carries through the whole piece.

Your audience will get used to hearing your company’s “voice” so you want to establish that early on. It will breed familiarity with your audience and consistency within your marketing.

It makes it easier on you and your employees

If everyone is held to the same standards, there will be less conflict over which way something should be written or whose concept of the “company voice” is right. It’s easy to update if company standards change.

It also acts as the “source of truth” whenever anyone has a question about how something should be written, or asks “why do we do it that way?” A good style guide can settle a lot of arguments.

Your writers will thank you. Your editors will thank you. Your entire marketing department will thank you. And most importantly, your audience will appreciate it, even though they don’t know it exists.

What Goes into a Style Guide?

Some of that will depend on your needs. I’ve seen style guides that are one page long and give basic guidelines. I’ve seen others, like MailChimp’s style guide, which is a mini-website. (Check it out, it’s really well done.)

Every style guide should contain:

Your chosen style manual

Most major media outlets use either the Chicago Manual of Style or the AP Stylebook. (There are arguments on which is better, I won’t go into any of that here.) Many companies adopt one of these style manuals as the basis for their own style guides. It gives them something to start with in terms of grammar and spelling. You can get an online subscription to both of these.

Your chosen dictionary

Why should you choose a dictionary? Because people have preferences. If you prefer the Merriam-Webster but one of your writers prefers the Oxford English Dictionary, you may have inconsistencies in your spelling. So choose one and make that the permanent reference point.

Voice and tone

I always ask my clients about their company voice. It helps me get a better feel for how they want to be represented. Here are some of the questions I typically ask:

Is your company:

  • Formal
  • Informal
  • Laid back,
  • Down-to-earth
  • Funny and cute
  • Matter-of-fact
  • Practical
  • Business like

Do you have a particular person you want to sound like? (Your CEO, a celebrity, a politician?)

Do you want me to write in:

  • The first person (I, me, I’m)?
  • The second person (you, yours)?
  • The third person (the company is, the company does)?

Would you prefer I write in an active or a passive voice? (Personally, I find this matters a lot in how your audience perceives you. I always prefer active, but I’ve written for companies that use the passive.)

Does your company use a lot of jargon? If so, does your audience understand that jargon or will I need to clarify it?

Thinking about these things can unify your writers into one company voice pretty easily.

Company branding

This section will deal with things specific to your company like:

  • How do you spell your company’s name? A lot of companies are combining two words into one these days, so this matters more than you’d think. MailChimp, FindLaw and SunEdison are all good examples.
  • Product names and how to spell them: Similar to company names, a lot of products have two words combined into one. Some companies use unique or clever spellings of common words for their product names.
  • Trademarks, Registered marks and Copyright marks: If your company or product names have been registered, you’ll want to use the ®. If they’ve been trademarked, you’ll want to use the ™ and so on. Also, some companies require that you use these symbols with every single use of the company or product name. Some only use it once per page. Establish that in your style guide so no one is confused.

Commonly troublesome words

This is where you decide whether you want to use Ebook, eBook, ebook or e-book. Do you capitalize Internet or not? (Editor’s note: Since I published this post, the AP Stylebook has changed its practice of capitalizing Internet from upper case to lower case.) Is it ecommerce or e-commerce? Go through all of the terms you use regularly and settle on one spelling.

This is also where you establish your company’s jargon. Some industries have more than one term for the same item or issue. Choose one and stick with it. Everyone will be happier.

Grammar and punctuation

To Oxford comma or not to Oxford comma? That is the question. If you choose a media style guide, this may be answered for you. If you don’t, you’ll need to answer this question.

What do you capitalize? Product names? Employee titles? Do Your Headlines Use Capitals At The Start Of Each Word? Or do You Only Capitalize the Standard Words?

Do you use abbreviations? If so, what abbreviations do you use? Do you write out the name or phrase that you’re abbreviating once somewhere on the page, then put the abbreviation in parenthesis next to it, like this: Search engine optimization (SEO)? After that, do you only use the abbreviation? Your writers will want to know.

Audience personas

Your marketing department (or your copywriter) should create fully-fledged audience personas for their own purposes. You should have the basics listed in your style guide for everyone to refer to so they have someone in mind when they write.

These can include:

  • Your target audience or archetype.
  • Persona name.
  • Where they see your message (social media, print media, radio, TV, etc.).
  • Their problems and pain points.
  • The types of solutions they may be looking for.
  • How your products solve their problems.

Formatting

This is where your content and design style guides will overlap. In many cases, your writers need to know some of your design standards. Such as:

  • Hex codes for approved colors, especially if your writers will create buttons for blog posts or landing pages.
  • Approved fonts.
  • Do images get captions?
  • Image placement.
  • Image width and height.
  • Can text wrap around images?
  • When and where should writers use bold, italics or underlining?
  • Do you use specific bullet shapes? If not, does it matter what the writers use?
  • Formatting for numbered lists.
  • Formatting for attributions and references.

Approved and unapproved content

Your writers will need to research. Where can they go? What types of sites can they use? For example, one content company I worked for insisted that we couldn’t use information from other content companies. They preferred we used professional and scientific studies whenever possible. They encouraged us to use sites with endings like .edu and .gov.

Some other examples of approved content sites might be:

  • Industry guides,
  • Market research sources,
  • Competitors

Sites you may want them to stay away from can include:

  • “Clickbait” sites
  • Taboo competitors
  • Unreliable sources within your industry
  • Controversial authors, opinions or sources

Examples of right and wrong

If there is any confusion about how to write something in any section, show a specific example.

For instance:

Our company name is FindLaw.

Please do not use Find Law, find law, Findlaw or any other variation.

How Do You Write a Style Guide?

Get input from your regular writers. (Or from the freelance copywriter you hired.) They’ll have established patterns and opinions on how things should be done. And people are more likely to follow your standards if they have a say in how they’re created.

Keep it simple. I know I listed a lot of information you should use here, but once you answer a lot of these questions, you’ll be able to distill it all down fairly easily. 4 pages is a good length.

Adjust your style guide as your company grows. This is a living document. Update it whenever changes are made so you’re always referring to the “source of truth.”

To make it easy for you, I’ve created a basic Company Style Guide template for you to follow. Just fill in the sections and you’ll be good to go.

Download the Company Style Guide Template Now

 

Does Your Company Have a Style Guide?

How do you use it? If not, why? Tell me about it in the comments.

 

How to Identify Your Target Audience in 3 Easy Steps (And Save Yourself Thousands of Dollars on Advertising)

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target-audience

Who are you talking to?

I’m completely serious here. Who are you talking to with your marketing? Do you have a target audience or are you just throwing money away trying to hit anyone and everyone you possibly can?

I am astonished by how many small business owners and entrepreneurs create a product or service and just assume that they can sell it to everyone. Whatever it is, you can’t. You’re wasting your advertising budget.

Even major retailers that sell just about everything under the sun have specific target audiences. Target and Walmart go after a totally different economic group than Nordstrom and Macy’s.

Identifying your target market is one of the most important steps in creating your marketing plan. It’s also the first thing you should do. In fact, it’s the first thing every copywriter is taught to do when writing any promotional piece.

Knowing your target audience can make your marketing campaigns less expensive and more effective. Take the time to figure out who you’re talking to. You’ll find it’s a win-win.

Here are 3 easy steps to identify your target market and make your entire marketing plan much easier.

Research Your Target Audience’s Demographics

Even if your product is so cutting edge it “solves problems you never knew you had,” you can figure out the demographics of your target audience.

Back when I was writing websites for lawyers, I would ask them about their target market demographics. A standard answer was “anyone with money and a pulse.” A very broad audience indeed.

But as we continued to talk, I’d wheedle more information out of them. For instance, some of the personal injury lawyers would tell me they didn’t want the “cheap” cases. So they were really looking for clients with injuries serious enough to need a lot of medical treatment.

I’d get some great information when I asked about the education level of their average client. Even an answer like “oh, most of them have graduated from high school and some of them have attended a couple years of college” told me a lot.

You can figure out your target audience’s basic demographics by asking yourself a couple of basic questions.

Who can afford my product?

If you’re selling your product for $19.99, you have a very different target market than if you’re selling it for $97, or even $997. Asking who can afford your product will give you a broad idea of your target audience’s income level. Once you know that, you can narrow down the income level of the customers you’re going after.

Who will find my product useful?

Some companies promote their products to anyone and everyone. I regularly get promotional postcards from the Westonka School District and Foss Swim School telling me about their children’s activities and lessons. I am a single woman living in a 1-bedroom house. I wish they would do their research and save their printing and postage.

A great demographic exercise is to ask yourself “who is this product for?” Take the time to write down your answers. Your answers can be as simple as “for mothers” or as detailed as “for working mothers who have toddlers between 18 months and 3 years.”

You can also include time and place: “For working mothers to give to their toddlers as a snack while they’re in the car or being pushed in a stroller.”

You may even find a whole new sub-set of people who would find your product useful: “For active working mothers who are pushing their toddlers in a jogging stroller while getting their daily exercise.”

The nice thing about this exercise is it helps you decide who you’re talking to and what you’re talking about.

Filling in the Gaps

From here, you can refine your customer demographics with research. You can find lots of information on the Internet about demographic groups, including generational information and basic group traits. Use these as a starting point, then drill down to find the demographics of the people who will be your best potential customers.

If you use Google Analytics, their system keeps track of a lot of demographic information. You can use this to build an audience profile based on the people who have visited your website.

Google Analytics dashboard

Google Analytics dashboard

I like to develop a full picture of my clients’ customers, including:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Income
  • Where they live
  • The kind of car they drive
  • Where they hang out on the Internet
  • Their basic shopping habits
  • What they do for a living
  • Marital status
  • Family

You can make this list as long or as short as you’d like. My list is pretty extensive. I have a degree in creative writing and theater, so I want to get an in-depth picture of my target audience. Download my Customer Persona sheet to get ideas for researching your own target audience.

You can get great target audience information directly from your current customers by asking them to fill out a simple survey. If you’re starting a new company and launching a new product, you can survey your email list of interested customers. There are a lot of free survey tools and sites out there. My favorites are Survey Monkey and Google Forms. 

Psychographics and Behaviors

Now that you know your target audience a bit better, you should get a feel for their interests. This includes their political leanings, hobbies and their religion or spiritual beliefs. This will help you deliver your message more effectively.

Why should you delve into this information? Because you’ll have a very different conversation with a 20-something male who is in to juicing and organic farming than you will with a 50-something female who is a devout Evangelical Christian and the head of a women’s knitting and quilting club that makes blankets for needy children.

This information is going to help you shape your message, especially when you have different subsets within your target audience. You should target your marketing for each group to get the best return on investment (ROI).

Again, I tend to get pretty in-depth here. I think about what types of magazines, music and TV shows my target audience would watch. (Most of this is guesswork, but it helps me get a better picture of who I’m writing to.)

You also need to look at their emotions. This includes their hopes and fears, and what they want in the immediate and long-term. Understanding these psychographics will let you push the emotional triggers that are more likely to make your target audience opt-in or buy.

You can figure some of this out by looking at advertisements for products that are similar to yours. Are they targeting the same audience? What are they focusing on? What emotions are they trying to evoke in their ads?

Interview Someone in Your Target Audience

 Now that you’ve researched your target audience, find someone who matches that profile and ask them out for coffee. You almost certainly know someone who fits the description you’ve just created. If not, you know someone who knows someone.

Ask this person questions about their life, their concerns and their problems. Ask them what products they use now to deal with these problems:

  • Are they effective?
  • Are they happy with these products?
  • What do they like?
  • What would they change?

Talk to them about your product and see how they respond. Ask them how it would help in their daily life, how they would use it and how they would benefit. If the person is interested in trying your product, offer them a sample and ask them to give you a testimonial if they like it.

I recommend recording your conversation (with the interviewee’s permission). I always record my interviews because everyone talks faster than I can type and I don’t want to miss something important. Most smart phones have a recording app already installed. If not, there are plenty you can download.

Create Your Customer Persona

Use all of the information you’ve gathered to build a customer persona. This is a full character sketch of your target audience. Again, this can be as long or as short as you’d like. But you should include:

  • Basic demographics like age, income, profession and gender.
  • Basic psychographics, especially their motivations, hopes and fears.
  • The problem they’re facing and the pain points it causes.
  • How your product can solve that problem and ease those pain points.

When I create customer personas for my clients, I give this person a name and add a picture so I always know who I’m writing to. I feel like having a name and a face helps me to have a better “conversation” with my target audience.

Starting the Conversation

 Now that you know who you’re talking to, and what you’re talking about, you’ll have a much easier time promoting your product to the people who will actually buy it.

You can use this information when you’re writing your promotional copy and ads. You can also use it to target your online advertising, such as Facebook and Google Ads. Each of these platforms have systems that let you drill down to show your ads only to your target audience. You can get as specific as the example of the active mother with the toddler I gave above.

Most importantly, you have a much better idea of who you want your customer to be. Now your marketing campaigns will be effective and bring in the people who will spend money and increase your bottom line. Congratulations. Your hard work will save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every year.

Want to get into the demographics of your target audience the same way I do? Click on the button below to Download my Customer Persona sheet.

DOWNLOAD MY CUSTOMER PERSONA SHEET

Do you know your target audience? Tell me about them in the comments section below.