Heroes in Business - Defining Your Market

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

One-size-fits-all marketing and advertising never works. Here, learn elements to get granular in identifying the various personas who make up your target market for more effective content in this episode of Social Media on Steroids with Dan Shinder

Hi, and welcome to the Social Media on Steroids podcast. I'm Dan Schindler, and I created the Social Media on Steroids brand of education, training, consulting, and services to help others learn from my experience of achieving extraordinary results with content marketing on social. I attracted a following of over 1 million people and reach millions more online each month, 100% organically. In this series, I share the strategies that helped me cross all the milestones it took to get there and that we still use. And please, before we dive in, take down my email address in case you have questions. I answer all questions and I take suggestions for topics to be covered in this

series. You can reach me directly at dan at advancedsocialmarketing.com. And of course, the website is the same URL. Follow the blog there and the Advanced Social Marketing YouTube YouTube channel. Okay, let's jump in. Welcome to episode 12. Here we go with defining your market. This is part two of a four-part mini-series in defining your brand, which you need to do to define the voice of your brand and therefore be congruent in your marketing with the content. We began with episode 11 of this podcast series, which was titled, Your Brand Is Not Your Logo and Font. I started with that because many people believe that that's what defines a brand. It does not. I went on to tell the story of hearing a graphic artist say to a group of people, and I quote, I created a brand for XYZ company, close quote, just because he created the logo and helped with putting it on some

merchandising products like hats and aprons. Remember, your brand is the promise you make to your consumers. It is not your logo. That's part of branding. It does not define a brand. So episode 11 describes also the 12 archetypes of brands, such as the hero, the outlaw, the explorer, the jester, and so on. It's actually a fascinating topic. In this episode here, episode 12, we will talk about defining your target market. This is important because it defines your content in more ways than you may realize. We'll dig into that. And here's what I mean. You cannot assume that your audience is made up of one persona who buys your products or services or hires you. You can't just assign

blanket content to a market and promote and advertise your entire target market with the same content. It's not a one-size-fits-all process. Even if they're buying the same thing, they are different people with different reasons for buying the same thing and at different stages of their life and their business journey if you're B2B or their consumer's journey if you're B2C. business journey if you're B2B or the consumer's journey if you're B2C. Therefore, they will process everything differently through the filter in their brain due to their life experiences and model of the world and environments. Some people even go as far to say as, all my clients in Target are high-level PhDs, so they're not blank, or they are blank.

No matter how much you try to believe they're all the same because of one underlying common denominator, even if it's a major one, your target market is still made up of different personas. So I'm going to give you an example. Let's say, and maybe you've heard me use this before, but let's say I have a hiking boot brand, Dan's Boot. And if all my video commercials on TV and social were all 18 to 24-year-olds hiking with those boots, the old

seniors like me would say, oh, those boots aren't for me. Those are for the kids. I need some boots for feet like mine, crotchety feet with lots of miles on them. But conversely, if all the TV commercials or videos on social had just seniors like me, then the 18 to 24 year olds would say, oh, those boots are for old people. I need boots for me. I'm spry. I'm young. I'm limber. So you can't, and they're the same product. So you can't use the same advertising, promotional, and marketing material for one product or service for different segments of your audience. They need to see themselves in that material. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. So here's some other examples besides age and gender. Well, actually, let's talk about, we talked about age, let's talk

about gender. We could use that same analogy with the hiking boot, with gender. If it was all men, women or girls may say, oh, those are boys boots. I'm not going to buy those. It's really simple. This is not rocket surgery. This is very simple. So here are some other examples of some things we need to consider when getting granular with defining our target market, our audience, because that's going to determine the content we put out. So there's location, which is the geodemographics. And did they live there their entire life or are they transplants? So for instance, I live in a really small city. It's hard to even call it a city, but technically it is. Really small city of 7,234 people in the mountains of Arizona. Really small. But I didn't live here

my whole life. I know people, in fact, a woman who's 105 who lives in town, she's been here since she was four. She might be 106 now. So people who grew up in this environment and never really traveled or got out have a different model of the world and different sensibilities than someone like me who grew up in Los Angeles. Grew up in Los Angeles, lived in Ventura. I've traveled all over the United States, in Los Angeles, lived in Ventura. I've traveled all over the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore. Those two people have two completely different filters of life, even if they're the same gender and the same age. So this is important to understand. Think about this for a minute. And I know we might be stereotyping a little bit, but let's just set that aside. Just think for a moment. Someone who lives in the desert versus someone who lives in the rolling hills of Montana versus someone who lives in the tropics of Brazil versus someone who lives in the

mountains where there's redwoods and pine trees. Just that environment alone is going to have a different reflection on how they process things. And I'll give you a product example related to that in just a moment. But other things to consider when getting granular with defining your audience so you can define the content you're going to use to market to them with.

Income brackets. Duh! Do you think income brackets matter? And even if you have a high-level product or service that costs, let's just say $10,000 a whack, that doesn't mean that everyone who could afford it is the same. Maybe some people are plunking down cash. No big deal. Got that in my pocket.

PayPal it right away. Bam. Maybe someone else is using a grant. Maybe someone else is borrowing it from their rich uncle or aunt. Maybe someone else is using a credit card. They just happen to have great credit. My parents did not have money, but my dad lived off of awesome credit because he knew how to work it. So there's different income demographics, even if you believe that your product is a high level price, it doesn't mean all those customers, clients, and prospects are the same. Very important to embrace this. How about cultural demographics? And cultural

demographics is a deep, wide, thick matrix of different ingredients. I'm going to give it to you a couple different ways. One, the way you might think of on the surface when I use the word cultural, it could mean someone from Mexico who's Mexican, anyone from Latin America, could mean someone who's from Asia Minor, Asia Major, so Japan versus India, completely different cultures. Someone from the deep south of America versus someone from Manhattan in New York. Someone from West Africa versus Sydney, Australia. But there's a whole other way to look at the cultural demographics beyond that. And not instead of, but just a whole other layer.

That's ranchers versus drummers who are not ranchers and ranchers who are not drummers versus people who are highly trained in the culinary arts versus someone who is a high-rise architect. versus someone who is a high-rise architect. It's usually vocational or interest-based. So someone who surfs versus someone who does rock climbing. I know someone can do both, but just hang in there with me. Or someone who knits versus someone who loves to go out to the rifle range. These are different cultures of people as well who might all use your same product or service. Could be landscaping, could be a truck.

We'll get to that. Just some examples. Interests, as I mentioned, are also where you want to get granular. The interest, by the way, between your brand and your target market, that common interest is one of the number one ways to capitalize on for your marketing, advertising, and promotional materials. Get to know their interests, and it's usually obvious, and leverage those interests with your materials. That's all tied to the cultural demographics as well. Levels of education. So do you think for a moment that someone with a ninth grade education who is 30 might see the world differently from someone who's got a PhD who's 30? Can you get a PhD by the time you're 30? I don't even know because I don't have one. Or let's go extreme. A 70-year-old woman who grew up in Manhattan, who now lives in Las Vegas,

who has a PhD, versus a 30-year-old woman who didn't go to college, grew up in the south of Georgia, and has been a waitress all her life. Not that one's better than the other. I'm just saying these are completely different lenses of life and filters in their brains that these two people are wearing and have internally that they process information with. Kind of extreme examples, but they are real ones. And there's many more things to consider, but these are some of the big ones. In a nutshell, people process information and develop sensibilities through the filter of their life experiences and environments. It's very important to understand this and integrate that understanding with your content marketing, whether it's on social, whether it's on the radio, whether it's

on TV, whether it's an email marketing, and especially any way in which it's visual with video or graphics. Don't lump everyone together. So in order to define who the content is speaking to, you need to define your target market and get granular. This is part of defining your brand. We all need to define our target market in the various segments that different personas represent. That way, we can produce content that represents those different personas. When we do that, they see themselves in our marketing, advertising, and promotional content. And that tells them our products and or services are for them. It makes it a for you product too, or a for you service too, because they see themselves. Let's go through some more fun exercises together to

build that muscle and make sure that I'm articulating it in a clear strategy. Okay, so let's see. Pet store example. Pet store. Let's use a pet store. Who would your clients be? Well, you could buy pets for kids versus pets for a single elderly person versus we just have pets. If you think about it, those are completely different advertisements. That's completely different marketing. That's promoting completely different, well, applications of maybe the same product, the kitten, the dog, the fish, whatever it is. Does that make sense? Because pets for a kid could very well be different than a pet for an 80-year-old person, right? I really hope this makes sense. Let's take pickup trucks. I kind of alluded to some of these differences before.

Imagine with pickup trucks, think of maybe commercials you've seen, billboards you've seen, print graphics you've seen, or static graphics on social that you've seen. Pickup truck advertising for ranchers versus general contractors versus a dirt bike motorcycle enthusiast like me. Think about that. What do you picture when I say each of those? A pickup truck for a rancher, a pickup truck for a general contractor, or a pickup truck for motorcycle enthusiasts? Well, when I mentioned pickup truck for ranchers, I picture exactly that. A guy or a lady with cowboy hat. They got their jeans on. It's dusty. Maybe they

got horses, they're pulling up with bales of hay, right? That's a whole different persona with different sensibilities. A contractor pulling up to a job, gets out of their truck, they open up that big tool thing in the bed and pull out the jackhammer or whatever it is. Totally different product if you think about it that way versus someone pulling down a dirt road with a couple really cool dirt bikes in the back, rolling them down the ramp, putting their helmets on, getting up, and there they go. Totally different advertising to appeal to the different personas that that same product is for. And the difference in geodemographics makes a difference. Imagine a rancher in the desert versus a rancher in the Midwestern Plains versus a rancher in the rolling hills of Montana. Make sense? I hope this makes

sense. I ask that a lot because I do this feeling like I'm speaking to you. Like I'm not just speaking to a microphone and a screen watching my waveform through my audio program. I feel like I'm speaking to you and I say this when I teach in person as well or on Zoom. So let's see what else. How about, I missed the water. How about swim lessons? So even beyond beginners versus intermediate versus swimmers who want to learn more advanced skills. Again, there's age differences that come into play in a big part. Gender could matter. Maybe a young mother doesn't want her 10 year old girl learning to swim from some big, burly 35-year-old. Everyone's got different boundaries. Everyone's got different sensibilities.

Everyone's got different soft spots and underbellies or concerns and defense mechanisms depending on their life's filter and their model of the world. So keep in mind, again, that for interests, all these factors come into play as well. When we talk about posting about different content that relates to the interest that isn't necessarily directly selling your product or service. So the thing to remember, no matter how granular you get, which is important because you need to design content that your different personas see themselves in for them to be sold, quote unquote. Aside from all of that, what it really comes down to is that it's the content that will determine whether or not you are successful in driving traffic, growing your following, or whatever your goal is. So when it comes to creating and

defining your brand, you've got to develop your content to resonate with the different representations of your target market. They're never all the same. In order to do that, you need to get granular. I'm going to give one more example. This is probably my favorite, a shoe store example. So if we owned a shoe store together, yeah, you and I, we owned a shoe store together. Shemagegi's shoes. What would we sell? Cowboy boots, work boots, hiking boots, rain boots, running shoes, walking shoes, tennis shoes, vans, cross trainers, deck shoes, women's flats, women's slippers, women's pool shoes, stilettos, other high heels, men's dress shoes, men's slippers, men's pool shoes. How many shoes did I just name there? I don't even know.

20? How many shoes did I just name there? I don't even know, 20? So even though one same person might wear five of those different types of shoes, you're marketing to them separately when they are the persona that wears those different shoes. So if I'm the hiking boot guy, that's got to appeal to me. If I'm, I'm 58, as this is being recorded. So if I'm 58, but all I see is 18 to 24 year olds wearing the boots, maybe that won't

appeal to me. I mean, it would to me because I know better. I'm in this business, but you know what I mean? Or how about running shoes from a youngster? And if they see someone my age wearing them, they might think, oh, those are running shoes for old people. Very important to break down your target market in different personas with all those different things. So what did we cover? Make a list. Make this list.

Write down age brackets, gender, geo-demographics, their locations, the different cultural demographics and interests, as many different ways as you could break them down, and then create content that speaks to all of those. There will be some overlap, of course, always. But when you embrace these different strategies I'm pointing out, you will have that many more chances to resonate with more people directly because they're seeing marketing and advertising material that basically says, hey, this is you and this is a for you product too. That's what you want your content to say when you're using your sales content. Then develop content that represents them in the wording, the photos,

the videos you use to advertise whatever it is you're offering. I'd love some feedback. Go ahead and email me. Let me know what you got out of this or if you have questions. Dan at advancedsocialmarketing.com. I'm going to apply what I teach and begin getting better results guaranteed. Much more to be covered in more episodes. And if you want to learn more or have a team you need trained, need a service provider who knows how it really works or just have questions, reach out. Cue the music. So remember, if you're serious about what you do, get serious about how you market it. Sign up for my newsletter and get my six steps to daily success PDF at advancedsocialmarketing.com and get notifications about my free workshops and other learning opportunities as well as the wacky changes on the major platforms stay up to date and see how i can

help you further at the same url check out the blog there and follow the advanced social marketing youtube channel as well you can also connect with me on linkedin at linkedin.com slash in slash dan schinder happy marketing connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com slash in slash Dan Schindler. Happy marketing.