Do you know your audience? Then you should have no problem answering these 6 questions

Know your audience. That phrase is drilled into every marketer and business owner. You’re probably tired of hearing it by now.

Yet it is true. You cannot sell something to someone if you don’t know who they are, or what they want.

If you can answer these six questions, then you’ve done your homework.

Who is your audience, anyway?

Sounds a bit redundant, doesn’t it? But who exactly are your audience?

If you’ve been in business for a while, you’ve no doubt heard of demographics and psychographics. Demographics are your target audience’s characteristics EG age, gender, and so on. Psychographics, on the other hand, are their attitudes.

This is the type of information you need. I want you to know your audience as well as you would if you were friends with them.

You need to know what they do on weekends, what books they read, what clothes they wear. You need to know their attitudes towards relationships.

You also need to deep dive into the kind of relationship they have with you. The truth is, you’re going to speak to someone differently who’s known you for six years than you are to someone you’ve never met before.

The same holds true for your customers.

What’s their problem?

Unless you are producing a service relative unknown to humanity, it’s going to solve some problem or other.

We really want to make sure we understand what that problem is, and not just in your language.

We’re going to come back to this later. But understanding the audience’s problem is going to help you make them understand it’s in your power to give them a solution.

What have they tried before to solve it?

We’ve got to know how far into this journey they’ve been.

If you’re a health coach helping people lose weight, do you know what diets they’ve already tried? Are they burned out on the yo-yo diet idea?

Are they frustrated at the lack of results? Or is this something brand new to them? And they just decided that now’s the time.

You’ve got to know where they are in this journey if you’re going to talk to them the right way.

Talking to someone so far gone, they’ve lost all hope, is different from talking to someone new to the idea.

What’s keeping them stuck?

Question number four, what’s keeping them stuck?

One of the reasons persuasive marketing exists is because potential buyers will almost always have reservations taking that final step.

You might even know these objections. What are they?

What’s keeping your audience where they are? What beliefs do they have?

What obstacles are keeping them from successfully implementing your solution or a solution at all?

Whatever solution you give them will need to address these objections. Going back to our weight loss example. If the obstacle is dieting requires foods that are too expensive, what are you going to do about that?

If you don’t know the objections in your way, then maybe you really don’t know your audience.

How do they describe their problem?

They have a problem, yes. What words do they use to describe it?

We’re the ones that know everything about our topic. It’s easy for us to fall into the trap of describing problems with our own words.

I can sit here and talk to you for hours about copywriting. Sometimes, I’ll use concepts and words and phrases that are over your head, or things you might not say yourself, and it’s going to immediately create that disconnect.

You don’t want that.

Think of economists. They might use words like “A surplus in commodity production has led to exponential raises on crude markets.”

You and I will probably just say “Gas prices are up.”

What is the irresistible solution?

Do you really know your audience? Then what is the irresistible solution to them?

I’m going to go back to this weight loss thing. There is a reason the diet pill industry is so popular. There’s a reason that everybody wants the magic bullet.

They don’t want to do the work.

Frankly, neither do I.

If you could say Alyson, I’m gonna pay you to sit on a beach with a Frou-Frou umbrella drink and a really good book, while a cabana boy waves a palm frond over you. That’d be goodbye marketing career and hello my dream job.

I’m sure my clients would love it if I could put money directly in their pocket. No, not even in the bank — straight in their pocket for instant use.

What is that irresistible solution you are offering?

you’re going to present that irresistible solution and show them how your product is going to help them get it.

But what you’re also going to do is show them how believing that irresistible solution exists is the thing that’s keeping them stuck.

Again, going back to weight loss, there are a lot of people stuck with that extra weight. They’re struggling because they believe there’s a magic pill that will unload all those pounds.

So you have to begin to break down some of those beliefs.

So… do you know your audience?

If you can answer these questions, then you know your audience:

• Who are they?
• What is their problem?
• What have they tried before?
• What’s keeping them stuck?
• How do they describe their problem?
• What is the irresistible solution

I know that this stuff feels really advanced. If you’re struggling to wrap your head around it, book a call with me today.

Originally published at https://alysonlex.com on August 20, 2021.