Are You Marketing to Your Target Audiences?

Whether we're promoting professional services, products or books, we tend to think that "everyone" should want what we have to offer.

The truth, of course, is that only specific target audiences need or want what we are promoting.



(For example, if you are selling dog beds, people with dogs would need or what dog beds. If people don't have a dog, unless they are buying a dog bed as a gift for a dog owner, they don't need or want this item.)

When it comes to marketing, are you targeting your efforts at specific audiences?

Or are you tossing your general marketing efforts out into the whole world, hoping the info will stick somewhere?

To identify your target audiences, ask yourself questions. This is akin to tossing a stone into water and watching the concentric circles expand out from the stone.



Who are the most likely buyers of your products or services? What do they need to know about your products or services to realize these are for them?

Who are the second most likely buyers for your products or services? What does this second group of potential buyers need to know to be motivated to take an interest?

Many years ago I worked for a product placement agency (putting products in movies). I taught younger agency staff how to write persuasive "pitches" to companies that might want to participate in a specific movie.

I said that we didn't write what we thought was exciting about the movie's opportunities, but what the company's representative had to hear to understand that the movie was a good opportunity for his/her company. In other words, we had to switch our POV (point of view) from our own to that of the potential company participant.

And this same POV is what we need to have when considering our target audiences: Not what we want to say about our products or services but what the potential target buyers need to hear to be motivated to be interested in what we have to offer.

While this sounds easy to do, it often isn't.

The first step, though, is awareness of the need to switch to this POV.

P.S. You might enjoy reading the Site Sketch 101 guest post "3 Ways Social Media Can Get You Out in Front" at http://budurl.com/socialmediainfront

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC, which offers "done for you" and "do it yourself" social media services including marketing-focused WordPress websites.

Visit Phyllis' "about" page on Google Plus.

Information about Phyllis' fiction books and ebooks is available on her Amazon author page at http://budurl.com/PZMAmazon