Marketing Monday: Connecting with Your Audience

Last Marketing Monday, we covered the basics of marketing. The first part of that is meeting your audience. Saturday’s Sales and Systems post discussed understanding why people buy and how to identify the kind of needs that drive people to buy from a site like Zazzle in the first place.

Today, we are going to cover the steps to take in order to take what you’ve learned, identify a specific audience that you are ideally suited to serve, and the steps you need to take in order to connect with them and begin serving them.

Identifying Your Specific Audience

On Saturday, I mentioned that people who buy from Zazzle fall into one of three categories: People who are looking to stand out from the crowd and feel more significant, people who want to feel like they belong to a team or a family, and people who want to connect with someone else on a more personal level.

The key to identifying a specific audience that you can serve is to think back to a time in your life when you wanted to stand out and feel more significant, or when you wanted to show you belonged to a team or a family, or when you wanted to connect with someone else on a more personal level.

Then look at some of the defining characteristics that you had at that time. For example, maybe you were an event planner or a reunion coordinator. Maybe you were a new home owner or a busy professional. Those are examples of the kinds of defining characteristics you can use to start thinking about your audience.

The Five Steps to Connecting With Your Audience

There are five basic steps involved in connecting with your audience if you want to reach them directly. Next week, we’ll talk about ways to market to more of these people with less time and energy spent, but this will get you started.

1.      Look for Common Ground

You chose some defining characteristics for your audience. Now look for common ground that you have with them in your current situation. It is this common ground that will allow you to figure out where to go to find more of the kind of people you want to reach.

2.      Locate Groups Where Those People Are Found

One of the fastest way to find big groups of the kind of people you want to reach is on Facebook and LinkedIn. LinkedIn has groups that cater to professionals and Facebook has groups of all kinds. Type in your defining characteristics in search and see what you come up with for groups that you could join.

3.      Join Those Groups

I don’t recommend signing up for more than 2-3 groups at a time. You’ll exhaust yourself. It’s better to focus on being present in 2-3 groups where you can start forming a reputation and getting known by the others in that group.

4.      Listen for Opportunities to Serve Them

The people in your group are there to discuss the issues, concerns, and problems that they face. Listen in and look for opportunities where you can share some of your knowledge or insights into the problems they have. Of course, you also want to look for opportunities to tell them about the products you have for sale, but that will come later.

5.      Share Your Insights, Wisdom, and Offers

Sales will come your way more often when you become known as the go-to person for tips, strategies, and helpful information about how they can get more of what they want out of life. Your products are just one piece of information to share about how they can get what they want.

Next Week’s Marketing Monday: Expanding Your Reach

During next week’s Marketing Monday, we’ll talk about how to expand your reach so you can serve more people without spending a ton of your time doing it.

Join Project FED

At Project FED, we are dedicated to helping people make money online sharing products that support orphans in Nigeria. If you would like to be part of the team, sign up to our email list and let us know what topics interest you most.

Comments? Questions? Experiences?

If you have comments or questions about today’s blog post, please put them in the comments section below. Share your experience or your struggles in connecting with your audience. We read and reply to all comments.

Location: Lewisville, TX, USA

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