The Power of Targeted Audiences in Your Marketing

(Please note this transcript is not edited and was produced by AI. It may contain mistakes and might not be entirely accurate.)

Jennie Wright [00:00:01]:

Hi. This is the Aquire podcast from the Audphonic Podcast Network, and I’m Jenny Wright. This podcast dives deep into the world of list building and online events, all of which are designed to empower you as an entrepreneur, or marketer with the knowledge and strategies to master these essential business growth tactics. Before we get into today’s topic, which is all about targeted audiences and your marketing. It’s here. It’s already happening, and it’s taking over the world, everything, and it’s pumpkin spice. If you’re not a fan, that’s okay. Love it or leave it.

Jennie Wright [00:00:35]:

It’s happening up here in Canada, and it’s truly a marker of the end of summer. It’s a sign that fall is here. The last quarter of the year is about to start, and it’s also your sign that you need to be milking all of your opportunities for email list building, ranking up that revenue as much as possible before the holidays hit. And I’m going to talk to you about this a little bit more towards the end of the podcast But just to get you a little excited here, we’ve got 10 weeks before Black Friday, 7 Wiehler 17 weeks until Christmas. So stick with me. And I’ll fill you in on all the trends for fall that you can take advantage of right now for your list building. Alright. Let’s kick off this episode with a fundamental marketing principle.

Jennie Wright [00:01:18]:

You probably already know. Basically, it states that before you can effectively target to any one group at all, you need to know who they are, what they like, what keeps them up at night, and what solutions they’re seeking to solve that problem. It’s just the bare basics of understanding your audience and hear me out. Everybody stumbles on this part at some point in their marketing multiple times. What makes it even harder is the amount of people online who say they can help you find your ideal client. They run you through demographics, conversion tactics, or they might do an anagram or psychographics. All useful tools for sure, but with so much advice and information around outline, it really does muddy the My goal today is to really clear that up, and I’m gonna start with a story. Years ago, my job was to go door to door and sell memberships for a big box warehouse retailer.

Jennie Wright [00:02:11]

And these were the epitome of cold calls. Okay? In a single day, I could easily walk in to 20 or 30 completely different businesses asked to speak to the owner or the manager and try my dentist to sell them on a membership. And the thing was, whatever you would sell to the owner of a fast food restaurant would totally not work for the owner of a mechanic shop, and it would super not work for interior designer asked me how I know. And I had to think about all the products that we had in the store, mentally group them, into different categories and then sell that category to each group, segmented by their business and their potential customer persona. Example, the fast food restaurant needed a huge four liter jar of ketchup, an industrial sized box of napkins, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff. The mechanic shop we’d need, hand degreaser, shop towels, and probably some really cool stuff out of the snacks. And the interior designer really wanted to know about the latest Parsons chair that arrived in 2 different wood tones and could be directly delivered to their client’s home. And your marketing should be no different.

Jennie Wright [00:03:20]

You should market to each segment of your market, your list differently. So they feel like you have something exactly created and curated for them. You would never think to talk about the person’s chair with the guy who’s got a fast food restaurant. It’s not what he needs unless he’s looking at a complete redesign. In that case, hook them up with the interior designer. By dividing your audience into distinct segments based on the demographics, their behavior, their interests, or other criteria that’s important on your business. You can really tailor that message and speak directly to their needs and their desires. I actually talk about this more in episode number 2 with Jason Wiehler, where we dive into the niche conversation, and I’d highly recommend you go and check that one Alright.

Jennie Wright [00:04:01]:

Let’s talk about creating detailed empathetic buyer personas. And if you don’t know what that is, don’t worry. I’ll explain it. And if you do know, then your probably sitting there going, okay. I gotta do this again, but you do. You really do. And in the realm of marketing, personas are the actual secret weapon to getting more people to click on your emails and sell your products. They’re not just profiles.

Jennie Wright [00:04:22]:

They’re pretty much the embodiment of your audience segment They’re the heart and soul of your marketing strategy and here’s why. Imagine you’re designing a product or crafting a message. Without a persona, you’re shooting in the dark. You might create something that’s a masterpiece in your eyes, but completely irrelevant to your audience. If you have the right persona, then you’re actually guiding your marketing towards the right person. And if you embark on creating personas and updating them on a regular basis, You’re not merely assembling, like, assembling demographic data, but you’re actually delving into the lives, the challenges, the aspirations, the pain points of your potential customers. It’s like stepping into their shoes for a time being, walking their path, seeing the world through their eyes, and then creating the perfect thing they want, solve their problems. Now you could say Sarah is my ideal client.

Jennie Wright [00:05:15]:

The busy mom of 2 looking for time saving solutions, so she’s not spending all day doing this, that, the other. But she’s not just a name. She’s a person. She’s breathing representation of the segment within your audience. You know her daily struggles from juggling work and parenting. Maybe trying to find a spare moment for self care. You understand the guilt she feels, but she can’t be in two places at once, and you share in the triumphs when she discovers a product or service that makes it easy for her to deal with the hectic life she’s trying to deal with. This has to go deeper.

Jennie Wright [00:05:46]:

Sarah has a lot more than just those top level concerns. It’s not actually the thing that you think it is. It’s driving her forward and you gotta figure out what that is so that you can get into that persona and you can actually speak to that person at a deeper level. That’s where personalization comes into play. This is the magic that happens when you infuse this higher level of understanding into your marketing campaigns. Personalization can really take center stage, and your message becomes less generic. And you stop shouting into that digital abyss. Personalization creates a warm empathetic conversation with your ideal client, Sarah, and others just like that person.

Jennie Wright [00:06:27]:

So when Sarah receives that marketing email or sees your social media ad, she doesn’t feel like a faceless recipient. She feels seen and heard, accepted, understood, and your content speaks directly to her needs and aspirations. It addresses the pain points that she has, and it offers a tailored solution to her situation. As a result, she’s more likely to engage with your brand. She’s more likely to click on your emails, explore your website, maybe even make purchase. Why? Because your brand has become the trusted companion on her journey, and she knows you understand her. This creates a massive domino effect, by the way. This is the magic that goes even levels deeper.

Jennie Wright [00:07:07]:

If you can replicate this level of personalization across all the various personas in your business, you’re multiplying the impact you’re compounding the interest that you’re creating. Each persona is a potential customer segment with unique desires and challenges. And when you create tailored campaigns for each, you’re ensuring that your market resonates with that diverse audience. So, what does this mean for your marketing effectiveness? It means higher engagement rates, a lot more click throughs, and a lot more conversions. It means your brand becomes a magnet for individuals who see themselves in your messaging who believe that you understand their world and who trust that your solutions are designed with their specific needs in mind. In essence, persona driven marketing isn’t about reaching different people. It’s about forging really genuine connections. And it’s about transforming potential customers into really loyal advocates.

Jennie Wright [00:08:02]:

The people who are going to talk about you at the top of their lungs everywhere. And it’s taking time to understand and empathize that your audience has issues that they need to have solved. And in turn, they’re gonna relate to your brand, and they’re gonna connect with your brand on a deeper level. Now I have to have the conversation here about AI because this is such a big thing and it’s gonna fit into your efforts, but it’s also gonna hinder them. So we’re gonna talk about both. Wiehler seeing this huge pendulum swift right now with AI for so many things from copywriting and social media, to online images, crunching data, and in this case of this podcast, figuring out who your target with your marketing. And I will tell you right now this podcast is AI free. I’ve written all of this content and probably will continue to do so, but I understand the power of AI and I do use it in several ways in my business.

Jennie Wright [00:08:55]:

I will say that. It’s a super powerful and game changing tool. That cannot be disputed. And it’s going to forever change the landscape that we’re, that we’re looking at in our businesses. It’s never gonna look the same. But because we’re in the beginning stages of understanding how it can play into our business, it’s the Wiehler West. And with everything that’s Wild West, and I’ve gone through a couple iterations of this with, like, clubhouse and various other things over the years, it’s gonna eventually settle down. And when it does, we’re gonna see that pendulum of reliance on AI shift a little bit back to center.

Jennie Wright [00:09:28]:

Wiehler never gonna not be without AI, and we’re never gonna see it completely go away. It’s just never gonna happen. But right now, I will tell you there’s an over reliance on AI for a lot of people in their businesses, and this can create a lot of tunnel vision because AI is not infallible. It could mean that the marketing strategies that you’re thinking about and you’re you’re plotting out through AI become way too narrow and potentially go off track. Now it could mean that you’re missing out on potential customers. It don’t neatly fit into the predefined segments that AI may have crafted for you. On the other hand, it could give you the inspiration to create new products. It could improve your writing.

Jennie Wright [00:10:05]:

It might make things easier and it could spit out some information. That you hadn’t even thought of. There’s ups and there’s downs, but the key is to strike some bounds, right, and to harness the power of AI while avoiding all of the pitfalls and combine the analytical powers that we all know that it has with your own human intuition. So making sure that you have that human touch for all of that creative thinking, your empathy, and overall, your strategy. There’s a lot of common mistakes that we wanna avoid with this targeting of our audiences. We’ve talked about a lot of and I wanna highlight some mistakes that people make. Some of the early mistakes that people make early in their business and late in their business. Tend to be that they don’t revisit these targeted audience personas.

Jennie Wright [00:10:48]:

They don’t go back and take a look at who they are and what they’re trying to achieve. They don’t go back and make sure that the same problems that Sarah had 2 years ago were the problems that she has now. And you really do need to kinda think about that and go back to it. You also have to make sure that you’re adapting to audience changes. Right? So this digital landscape that we play in is constantly evolving. Stuff that worked a couple years ago doesn’t work anymore. Audience preferences, behaviors, platforms, all of that change over time. What worked with any given audience even, I’d say 6 weeks ago, 8 weeks ago, when we saw things like threads come online, doesn’t work anymore.

Jennie Wright [00:11:27]:

And so this leads me to another story that I wanna share. And this is about 6 years ago. I wrote this really amazing email series to my list. I mean, it was probably the best thing I ever did. And the goal of the series was to book sales calls for Summit’s online events that I produce and so on. The emails were to the point. They listed out the big pitfalls of trying to do the summit yourself. They also listed out, you know, how you could achieve really great results, and they would encourage people to book a phone call with me.

Jennie Wright [00:11:59]:

I told them that within the phone call, I could give them a strategy that could help them build this awesome email list, and then they could market to them for days. You get the gist. A bit more to it, but that’s basically the gist of it. The result of sending those emails out to my list was I booked 36 calls in about 3 days. I was stoked. I was so happy. I was impressed with my efforts. Apparently, I’m the best marketer out there, and I had nailed the marketing to my list.

Jennie Wright [00:12:24]:

Apparently, I knew their persona, I knew their issues, I knew their problems, and I knew exactly how to market to them. The result was I did those 36 calls, and I closed about half of them. So I had a really profitable quarter. So I’m very excited. But a year later, I thought, okay, this works really well last. You know, last year this time, but I tried again. So I sent out the exact same emails. I maybe updated a couple little things, but I kept the essence of it.

Jennie Wright [00:12:51]:

And this time, I only booked 11 calls. If you can do math quickly and I can’t, I had to get this done. That’s a 70% drop. That is huge. Something wasn’t right. I was doing something wrong. I had no clue what. Same email, same list, right? Like, same email to the exact same audience, this should’ve worked.

Jennie Wright [00:13:11]:

It didn’t. I didn’t understand why. Until I had a little sit and think, and then I realized it had been a year since I tried that strategy. In that time, in those 365 days, I had called my list quite a bit. A lot of people had left. They’d unsubscribed. I’d remove people that were inactive. And it added a whole bunch of new people through different marketing efforts.

Jennie Wright [00:13:31]:

And my audience had actually involved. So did I, and they were a totally different persona. I just didn’t know it, and I hadn’t thought about it. And that was my lesson learned. You have to go back and revisit these personas on a regular basis because you don’t wanna do what I did, send out the exact same email hoping for the same results and then get completely bummed when it doesn’t work. And thinking, you know, I was badass last year, and now I’m, you know, Nothing. So this is where we talk about future trends and why, you know, last year was different than this year or 6 years ago was different than 6 months ago, it does change over time. And the conversation you need to be having is how am I going to adapt to all these different changes? And the answer the answer basically is you just have to be really adaptable.

Jennie Wright [00:14:22]:

You’re going to try things. You’re going to make mistakes. But if you keep revisiting it and looking to improve over time, you’re never gonna hit a problem in the long run. You’re always going to be evolving. Right? So I can’t predict the future. That is a crystal ball I do not own. It’s anybody’s guess what’s gonna happen 6 months from now, 6 years from now. But what I do see happening, what the trend is doing right now is high touch marketing.

Jennie Wright [00:14:47]:

And a very personalized email campaign. Alright. Let’s circle this up. We’ve talked about AI. Audience changes, common mistakes. We’ve talked about All different things like the domino effect of your marketing. We’ve talked about the power of personalization, detailed empathetic buyer personas, and I really recommend you do that in a big way. We talked about even when I had to do cold calling, which I actually enjoyed.

Jennie Wright [00:15:11]:

I’m got pretty good at. But what I wanna talk about right now is what we’re seeing the trends happening for fall. I started all this episode talking all about pumpkin spice lattes and the beginning of fall here in Canada. So for me, that always tells me it’s time to get my ducks in a row for the fall email list growth and any revenue that I’m gonna eke out between now and the end of the year. If you know this, you know this. Anything that happens after American Thanksgiving in November is a practical, like, just literally a no go zone. You can’t do summits. It’s challenging to do any type of marketing on a bigger scale because you’re competing for attention with so many people.

Jennie Wright [00:15:51]:

Retailers, Everybody who’s doing a Black Friday Cyber Monday sale leading up to the holidays, and then after the holidays, you got the dip. Everybody’s just trying to cover, and they’re really not interested in spending a ton of money unless it’s a big deal. Like, a really big, you know, 70 for 75% off deal. So there’s a lot to think about. And I want you to think about what you can do in the months leading up to that right now into the end of the year. And I want you to think about the start of next year. In the space right now with my clients, we’re talking about that right now. I have projects with clients that are actually gonna happen in November.

Jennie Wright [00:16:25]:

They’re launching. They’re happening before American Thanksgiving. And then we’re talking about other launches for late January, February, March. So right now, the products that people are launching are books, challenges, some summits, panels, and webinar series. These things work really, really well because they don’t have a huge outlay of resources, you can do them in a short, condensed time, and you can get really great results. So right now, that’s something that I think people should be thinking about. So again, challenges, webinars, book launches, panels, mastermind launches are really good right this time of year. Merrish a kickoffs, I would definitely do those.

Jennie Wright [00:17:07]:

So I would think about all these different things and what you can eke out between now and the end of the year and also start that future planning for 2024 It is never too early. And if you need some help making that happen, I’m not kidding with you. Book a call with me right now. There’s a link in the show notes. I will create a tailored strategy that’s unique for your business. It’s gonna be something that’s gonna add emails to your list, potentially revenue in your pocket, and get you set up for the rest of the year leading into 2024. So you can do that at oddfonic.com/acquire. You’ll see all the show notes.

Jennie Wright [00:17:40]:

For all these episodes, and you can book that call. So that’s pretty much it for talking about these tailored audiences. I think this has been a comprehensive guide of unlocking this power of targeted audience in your marketing, whether you’re a seasoned marketer or really just starting out, I feel like these strategies are really gonna help you reach the right people to create the right message at the right time. So you’re in front of the right audience, right, when you need to be. So make sure that you’re checking out the rest of the podcast There’s tons of episodes that are gonna be coming out. And I’d love to see you hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode, and you could elevate your list building, your lead generation, and your online event game at any point. So make sure to check them all out and make sure to check out the show notes. Thanks so much, and we’ll talk to you soon.