Be everything to someone instead of something to everyone.
image lovingly shared from @taramilktea
The idea of putting ourselves and our products out into the world where there is so much competition can be truly scary and sometimes even makes us second guess the very choice to go into business.
I'm here to tell you, you're not alone. Most people have those nagging thoughts about not being good enough or that no one will buy what they're selling. In fact, you can also look at competition as a positive: it means there is an audience for it.
The thing is, you are good enough.
You have more wisdom than you realize. I mean look, you may not be the only one selling exquisitely crafted handmade pottery or planning beach weddings, but that doesn't mean you won't be incredibly successful. You just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other, start with the right audience (you're tribe) and be everything to those special people rather than being something to everyone.
This goes back to the first part of this blog series about understanding your value and what makes your product/service unique. In the end, we have to lean on ourselves and what makes us and our expertise special and unique.
So how do we find and connect with our tribe?
First, we have to flip it and focus on our ideal customer. We have to understand what is important to them. What problems do they need solved that we can help with. A great way to really visualize your ideal customer is to create a customer persona. Depending on your business, you may have 1-3 personas or as many as 10-15. I would suggest starting with your top 1-3 to get started.
Questions to consider as you develop your personas are:
- Personal Details (household, job title/industry, aspirations)
- Demographics (age, education, income, location, gender)
- Personality (social engagement, communication preferences, hobbies)
- Goals (what drives them)
- Challenges (biggest pain points)
- Fears (what keeps them up at night)
- Solutions (how does your product or service make their life better)
- I also like to pop in a photo of what the potential person might look like.
To make it a little easier on you, I've created another freebie download in the form of a Customer Persona Template to keep everything organized in one place. You can get access to it here.
Now, when it comes time to actually fill in the customer personas, there are a few ways to go about it:
- Interview customers (if you have them). Consider providing an incentive for their participation.
- Send a survey to subscribers (if you have them). Consider providing an incentive here as well.
- Analysis of customer purchasing behavior (if you have sales). Look for trends to see what interested past customers to make a purchase.
- Another really fascinating way to get some great information about your potential audience is with Facebook Audience Insights. You will need to set up a Facebook Business Manager Account via business.facebook.com. Just follow the prompts to set up or you can get more help with this link from Facebook.
Next we put on our thinking cap and hypothesize about other brands that may be of interest to our tribe. The only caveat here is that you will need to think about brands that have a large Facebook following for there to be enough data. Let's go back to the fictitious brand of children's clothing made with organic cotton that I provided when we worked on defining goals in the second part of this blog series. I would probably be correct to assume that the mother who is purchasing clothing made with organic cotton may very well be interested in purchasing other products for her children made with organic or without potentially harmful ingredients. One business that I would consider a contender would be The Honest Company. They make a wide variety of products for baby, personal care, cleaning, and vitamins made without potentially heath-compromising chemicals or compounds.
To get to Audience Insights in the Facebook Business Manager, just click on the stacked icon, hover over "All Tools" and click "Audience Insights". Here is a screenshot of how to get to Audience Insights.
I typed in "The Honest Company" into "Interests" within Audience Insights to see if they have enough fans for this experiment - they do. See the other screenshot below for where to go.
That's pretty much it. Now you can tour around and view a bunch of really great information about the audience that likes The Honest Company's Facebook page or any other Fan page that you are able to pull up with enough of a following. Cool stuff, right?
Now that you have your pep talk from me, all the pertinent questions to consider when crafting your customer personas and some really awesome ways to fill in the information, what's next?
Loves, it's time to start crafting content that will connect with your tribe.
Thank you so much for reading! I looking forward to continuing to help you tell the story of your brand, products/services through thoughtful, valuable and informative content.
I hope you found value in this three-part blog post series about getting clarity with your brand. Please get on the list for my weekly email to be the first to know about new free resources, ideas and inspiration to keep you moving forward.
With love,
Arica