[00:00:00] Dominique: You are listening to episode 45 of the creative spark podcast.
I'm your host, Dominique Falla. And today we're discussing why you should define multiple target audiences and specifically why creatives should be defining multiple target audiences for the various parts of their business.
In episode 42 of the podcast, we talked about how to develop a signature solution.
And in that framework that I gave you in that podcast episode, we looked at developing nine steps or nine modules or nine segments of your signature method. And the thing is if each one of those solves a specific problem for your audience, then you've potentially got nine different customer types.
And then targeting them with each of those individual modules. It means that you can be targeting people at different steps of the customer journey or people who are interested in completely different aspects of your business or your service or your offering.
So as an example, I've got a signature course and it's called the creative funnel formula, and that has nine steps in that framework. And so that means that one of my potential customers, they might be struggling to find their perfect niche. So. The bonus module of my framework would be most beneficial to them right now.
On the other hand, you might have a potential customer who is struggling to repurpose their content effectively. So step five of my framework would be most beneficial to them. You've got different people at different stages of their journey. And so overwhelming them with your whole process. It's not going to be of any use to them, right now, you need to really focus in on an individual problem and just focus in on the person who needs that right now.
Here's the thing. Most online marketing gurus. They're going to tell you to invent one ideal customer avatar for all of your content and products. And I got blocked on that for quite some time.
I just went round in circles, thinking who is this one person who is going to encompass all of the needs of a customer for all of the things that I have to offer. And I just stayed stuck for such a long time, because I couldn't actually work out who that one amazing person was that needed everything I had to offer, because of course I had lots of things to offer, which means that they would appeal to lots of things, different people.
I think it's actually impossible to capture all the problems you solve in one marketing persona or ideal customer avatar. The problem is the person, this magical person. If you create just one, they end up being vague. And wishy-washy because you're trying to accommodate everything that you offer in your course or your program or your content.
Now, over the years, I've signed up to so many online business courses. I don't want to even care to remember every one of them, but they all advocated for this idea of a one customer avatar model. And I just always struggled with this because as I said, I attract so many different customer types and it just never made sense to speak to only one.
So if you've got lots of things to say, because you're a multi-passionate creative, then it might be a good idea to think about multiple different people to say it too. It really was only when I began focusing on multiple avatars with multiple problems that were all solved by my core offering, that I really saw any results with my content marketing.
So all of a sudden writing a blog post for Samantha to help her find her perfect niche using the steps I teach in my perfect niche freebie. It became so much easier because that specific topic was all I was talking about. And I was just talking about it to a person who was struggling with that problem.
And then my other avatar, Rebecca, she needs help with content repurposing then a different module of my signature framework is going to solve her problem. And then I might have another customer avatar called Libby and she might need help building a funnel. So content from module four of my creative funnel formula it's perfectly aimed at her. So I actually gave all of these people names and then wrote specific bits of content for those people.
The benefit of this is not only creating the content marketing for your business becomes much easier.
I can also see exactly where they hang out. So each of my nine funnels, they actually start in different places. For example, my perfect niche funnel, it starts over on Pinterest because people who are looking for solutions to the problem of finding their niche, that tends to be where they go and look, In contrast my content repurposing funnel, it's fed from a Facebook ad for my low-cost content genie product, because people are on Facebook looking for business and marketing advice. And so when you can target them with an advert, for something that can highlight a different problem to a different group of people.
And then my funnel funnels, which is pretty meta. I know, but it's fed from a SlideShare on LinkedIn. So it's talking really deeply about the tech, which is needed, and then you can embed it, affiliate links for some of the tech that you're recommending, but also it's an authoritative place that people are going for free information, but they're confident that they can have a solution that they're going to trust.
So in that example, I've got three different avatars. They're going to three different places to look for solutions for three different problems. And so in the end, my creative funnel formula course will be useful for all of these people, but they start the entry into my funnels in different places.
Now suppose you cover the same major topic or struggle in your content marketing in that case you're potentially missing out on customers who only struggled with one step or facet of your core offering, not to mention burning yourself out, talking about the same thing over and over again.
It's much more effective. If you can get laser-focused with your personas. And then when you solve multiple problems with multiple steps of your signature framework, you can target multiple audiences.
If you talk at one time, customer avatar for your core product, you're going to quickly run out of things to talk about in your content marketing, because you can't really go deep on something. If you're trying to cover all the bases for that one person
if your customer avatar is struggling with one core problem, it really only gives you one topic to discuss. Even if you offer a significant transformation, you'll wind up creating multiple products to give yourself enough things to talk about in your marketing. And that was a problem that I had so often.
It's great to be able to bring it all back to one offering, but you can talk about it using multiple lenses.
So now I'm able to create laser-focused messaging for each of the nine modules in my nine step signature solution. If you start with your signature framework, if you followed along in episode 42, then you can actually think about building nine funnels, one for each of those problems that you solve within that framework.
And then all the customers will be funneled into the one product or method or solution that you have to offer. And then that way you're going to go from only having one broad topic to talk about to then having nine specific topics. And you can go from targeting one vague avatar to nine, really laser-focused personas.
And if you think about it, you can create content, on a nine week rolling schedule. So you can cover. Each module individually in a blog post every week, and then you just cycle back around. And it's so much easier to talk about the same topic once every nine weeks than it is to talk about the same topic every week.
Trust me. So have I sold you yet? You kind of let go of that idea of one customer avatar and think about, okay, let's create nine. So if you've actually got a signature solution or multiple steps in your method or your process, just think about how you could then unpack that for each of those individual steps.
Let's dive a little deeper into the steps you can take to leverage your signature framework and start to attract multiple target audiences.
Step one, as I said is to create your nine step framework. Now this is literally just a method. So you could be teaching something like I am in the creative funnel formula course.
So they're literally modules. It might be that you've written a book. So these might be chapters or areas or topics within that book. It might be that you have just a signature process that you take your clients through. So if you're a branding agency, for example, you might have the onboarding sequence and the branding part of it, and then the design and then the style, and then the implementation sections.
You have a sequence of steps that you take your customers on that customer journey through that is a perfectly valid and viable nine step framework. I'm using nine, just because it's a good number. You can get a really deep result from nine steps. And it also means that you can group them into three groups of three, because people can only remember three things at a time.
So I stick with nine. It's a terrific number, but you can do three or six or 12. Start with a framework with enough steps that you have enough variety that you don't burn yourself out on one or two topics.
Once you've got the steps in your framework or your method. List out some measurable results. whilst your overall signature framework is promising a big result, each of those steps or modules or segments, each of those can also have a mini result. And that way your audience has kind of encouraged and motivated by the fact that step one, got them a mini result, and they're more encouraged to then take the next step and get another mini result.
try and find measurable results for each of those steps on your frame. Then step three is to list out some customer problems. Measurable results for my perfect niche module is that you define your perfect niche. So obviously a problem that a customer would be struggling with is they might not be able to make a decision, they might be too scared to choose one because they're worried about choosing the wrong one or they don't want to let go of all the other things they're interested in and that they could build a niche around, you know, there are multiple problems. The idea that you come up with a perfect niche result is going to solve.
Then once you have a sense of what you're promising and also what people are struggling with, you can then go to step four, which is to research real customer questions. I really liked just to go to Google for that, because when you actually search around those particular topics in Google, it will come up with, people also asked.
if you scroll down the Google search results, you'll actually see questions that people have framed up around that topic. I often find it quite interesting to just, explore what people are actually searching for, because they might have a really different confusion or question around the topic that you wouldn't necessarily have thought of yourself.
So do a bit of research on Google, do some searches. See what else people are searching for. Pinterest is another great place to just see what are the topics people are searching for around that idea? Then, of course there are paid services, like answer the public where they give you a deep dive analytics on the types of questions people are asking.
Once you've got some questions that your real customers are asking, then you can start to visualize for them in step five, some kind of aspirations. If somebody is struggling to find their perfect niche and they're asking questions about, how to find a niche and are they profitable ones and how do they decide which one is the best one to go forward, et cetera, these are the questions.
Then you can give them aspirations. Once they've solved that problem, what do they want to do on the other side of that? So for me, if using that perfect niche example, it might be that they want to build a business or a blog, or they want to write a book around their perfect niche. that's the aspiration, which this particular block, it's stopping them achieve that next goal. Try and work out, why it's important to them to actually solve this specific problem.
and then once you've got all this information, so you've actually got the results of each of your steps. You've got the problems that the customer is struggling with. You've got the questions that they're asking around that topic, and then you've got the aspirations of why they would want to solve that problem.
Then you can start to build out a customer persona. Put all that information together for each of your steps and you can start to give them names. You can give them ages. The thing to watch out for here is a lot of people when they're building customer personas, they tend to look at demographics.
And so, that's useful. It's great to know whether a male or a female, whether they're 12 or 64, but that isn't the sort of most important information. It's just additional information to help you visualize one single person. But the fact is their problems, their struggles, their goals, all those sorts of things are much more important than ,, 35 year old woman who lives in the gold coast, all the 35 year old women on the gold coast have very different aspirations.
So it helps to give you a visual for somebody to aim for. But,, don't spend too much time on the demographics of a person. It's much more about the psychographics, what they're struggling with and how they think.
Then step seven in this process is to work out where these people go for answers, like I said before, somebody searching for the perfect niche solution tends to go to Pinterest. That seems to be a great place to find resources around how to choose your perfect niche. that's what I call a funnel filler. So that's when you're attracting somebody into your funnel with your freebie.
You can actually, go find them, where are they looking for answers and how can you provide answers that they're going to be attracted to
Step eight of this process is to create a list of lead magnets. Obviously you can go further in depth into actually creating lead magnets for your audience, but just at this stage, when you're actually building out the audience persona, it's a great idea to just think of, what would this person.
Think is a great solution to their problem. What's going to be a 10 minute quick win, whether it's a checklist or a quiz or a downloadable template, what's the kind of thing that's going to really solve their problem quite quickly and get them to know like, and trust you a bit more to, find out more about how you can solve their particular problem.
Just as you're building out your personas, it's a great idea to just j ot down any quick ideas. And then, later part of the process, you can start to develop a lead magnet properly. And then once you've got all this information, step nine is just to compile it all together into a persona card. a persona card is just really, a place to compile all of this information.
So it's in a handy place because when you start to create marketing messages or you're writing blog posts, Or you're creating those lead magnets or even the paid offers that you're eventually going to be selling people. It's a great idea to just have a quick, easy reference of which persona you're talking to at that particular moment.
I try and give them names so I can start to write all of my content for a particular person. It just reminds me if I'm creating a podcast about this topic that I'm talking to this person who has these problems.
Whereas if I'm creating a blog post about a different topic, I'm writing for a different person. the persona card is just a really great way to bundle all that information together. HubSpot has a great free resource, which is to create a persona.
Using a tool. They've got an online tool where you can actually fill in all the information and it presents it in a really cute graphical way. But if you Google, free persona template or something like that, lots of persona cards will actually pop up. So it's a nice idea. If you're visually motivated to actually make these things into nice looking cards, otherwise you can just jot this information down in a word doc and just create persona profiles for each of your steps.
I hope this episode has helped persuade you why you need multiple target audiences, not just one. And now that you know the steps, who are your multiple personas going to be, and what does each one of them need from you right now?
Head over to dominique Falla dot com for all the links I've mentioned in the show notes, and I'll be back next week with another episode of the creative spot podcast. .
