Congratulations, You've Targeted Nobody

My confession: I have taught the same lesson on target audiences, to thousands of students, and some of them still walk out thinking "everyone" is a valid answer to "who is your customer."  They say, “We don’t want to miss anyone.”
The businesses that grow aren't the ones shouting into a crowd hoping someone's interested. They're the ones who picked a person, learned exactly what that person worries about at 11pm, and then showed up exactly there. Everyone else just gets to watch and feel left out, which, oddly makes them want in too.

Who is the Hero of Your Story?
Not you. Never you. The hero is your customer. You're Gandalf. You're the wise person who shows up with the right tool at the right time and then steps offstage. If your "About Us" page reads like a story about yourself, congratulations, you've cast yourself as the hero of a story nobody asked you to star in.
Understanding your audience isn't a "got it, moving on" kind of lesson. It's a "relearn it” every time the market changes or someone invents a new way to do something. Businesses don't fail because nobody tells them about target audiences. They failed because they heard it once, nodded, and then went right back to talking about themselves.

Knowledge doesn't always stick. Practice does. (A teaching moto of mine)

What Actually Works

• Name the one person, not the demographic. "Sarah, 34, who just took over her family's clothing store and is terrified of looking incompetent in front of the regulars" beats "homeowners 25-54" every single time.
  
• Find the 11pm worry. What keeps your hero up at night that your product or service quietly fixes? Lead with that, not your founding story.
  
• Make them the hero in your content, not a supporting character in yours. Posts about their problem   outperform posts about your product, every time I've measured it.
  
• Stop optimizing for "everyone might like this." Optimize for "this one person would screenshot this and   send it to a friend."​

If you want the long version of this lesson without sitting through my actual class, read Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller or This Is Marketing by Seth Godin. Both make the same point I do, with better production value and no tests.

Follow @thesocialprof on Facebook or Instagram.

Kellie Emrich, DBA
Marketing and Business Professor ​

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