Connect with your audience they said..
All marketing advice starts with ‘write for your audience’. But how do you know which audiences will work?
What types of ‘digital audiences’ are there?
The Topic Audience
The topic is how we describe people’s core interest, it is a ‘thing’, a word, the object of the sentence. People use search engines to re-search topics. It is the ‘what’ that people search for.
Every additional word in the search phrase shows us something about the many different audiences that exist around a topic.
What core topics are your audience interested in?
For us it would be “keywords”, “seo”, “website content”, “digital marketing”.
Sub Topic Audiences
People add words to the topic to specify their interest. For Search Keywords the sub topic can be categorised and the searcher assigned a ‘level of interest’ based on those additional words.
We could add the word strategy to each of those core topics to determine an intent to do ‘something’. Knowing what visitors want to do could be helpful.
Categorise interest
We categorise types of searches, firstly between commercially interesting, or not.
Informational Searches
The broadest search, the least specific, is the topic on it’s own. The bigger the topic, the bigger the waste of time trying to serve those people.
Those searching for plumbing, dentistry, seo or whatever it is are generally looking for information on the topic. Although, there may be other non commercial terms added to the core topic.
A search for information is not commercially interesting
Informational searches indicate no intent whatsoever. There is little benefit in serving these searches; the Search Engines act like a dictionary, helping those non-intent searches with the answers directly. These are zero clicks, and we don’t worry about them.
Those information searches might represent the audience you are interested in, but they are not yet interested in you, they are too far away from doing something. We are not building a library, we like to build decision engines.
Commercial levels of interest
A dentist, a type of dentist, a dental product or service, a type of dentistry, a dental solution, a dental problem.
These represent people looking to do something, they all represent a single person at different stages of their journey towards ‘doing something’. What they are looking to do is make decisions.
The most valuable searches are those looking for a specific type of provider.
The benefit of knowing your audience is clear; be more timely and relevant in your conversation. The content you would serve will be different at each step, for each keyword.
Define your audience
The first step is to look at the topic and level of interest using simple free keyword tools, and your existing data. we can teach you how to analyse your keyword audiences.
People interested in you and your products
Search Engines are full of people looking for products, services and expert providers, maybe like you. Sell what people are looking for, and it could be productive.
Your audience needs to be ‘addressable. You need to be able to start the conversation.
The ability to find, segment and connect defines an audience. If you can’t see the audince in the keywords, and can’t find another way to connect, it doesn’t really exist, outside of your imagination.
Who do you do it for:
Niching is something we all do as providers, whether we realise it or not. It’s not only the industry, there may be other factors at play.
Digital channels have enabled more niche audiences than ever before; communities of interest, podcasts, blogs, YouTube, Search, Social and yet to be uncovered groups.
Because competition online is high, you can still niche within Search Engines too. You might need to.
Your expertise plus niches = more productive audiences
This is the marketing toolbox, the niche criteria. These are the niche words that you can add to your core expertise to thin out competition to manageable levels.
Audiences are made of layering up the niches. The smaller the audience, the more relevant your offer and communication. The more traction you get, the less you waste, the more competitive you can be.
How to choose audiences
Looking at your client base: which niche criteria is prevalent in your most profitable long term projects?
The criteria you choose will steer you towards channels
Consider the frequency of need: outbound connecting and finding your audiences in Social Channels is fine unless they only choose a provider once every 10 years
Your core expertise is no longer enough
The core topic is defined by what you do, your expertise, and who you are, the expert. Without a doubt, you can connect with people who are looking for your expertise.
If you were the only provider of a service, then it would be easy.
But value is eroded by competition, and that competition is so close at hand these days, we need differentiators. The world will continue to niche more.
The need to niche is driven by the level of competition. Its rarely enough just to be really good at what you do. Your prospects need to know why you are different and be confident in choosing you.
Your audiences are often not about ‘what you do’.
Writing content about your expertise is going to attract other people who want to become good at what you do. Sometimes that’s exactly what you want, sometimes it isn’t. Are you training people, are you selling advertising space on a trade website, or are you selling a service.
In our case on this website we are working with marketers and business owners, and want to train people on our framework. We are ‘role niched’.
In my day job, we work with people looking to create customers for their services. Most of us struggle with how to identify and connect effectively; the answer is usually stood right in front of us.
It’s not about you, its about them
The relevance to the people you serve is defined by the niches your audience are in; who they are, and what they do. They find it easier to work with experts in their stuff, in their decision.
Contrastingly “Your clients don’t understand you and your topic well enough, and never will.“
They don’t want email, they want ‘me-mail’, ‘Seth Godin, the purple cow
When you talk about them, they hear you.
Relevance
If this page were specific in your industry, you’d be reading this much more closely.
What business are you in? Lets drill down into your audiences. Will it be profitable. Can you work that out ahead of time?
Niching: How do you get started?
Just by deciding your niches, you can make progress. More progress than if you don’t decide. Start fast, change your mind later.
If you spend enough time looking to hang out with a specific group of people, you’ll start to uncover what makes them tick and what winds them up. Its a focus of attention to start with.
Those niche elements exist alright, whether we consider targeting them or not. Make your best guess, and start.
The easiest way to figure it out is to write it down.
Start with New Business Opportunities
Funnels are never nice description. But at least it helps us understand each other.
Posting to our existing audiences on social is rarely the best strategy to get new business. At least, those strategies won’t work if we don’t get the first step right.
The three ways to generate new business connections.
Start with the audience and work backwards.
