Getting Started Part 3: Find Your Tribe

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:

1. Interview customers (if you have them). Consider providing an incentive for their participation.
2. Send a survey to subscribers (if you have them). Consider providing an incentive here as well.
3. Analysis of customer purchasing behavior (if you have sales). Look for trends to see what interested past customers to make a purchase.
4. 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.

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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

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Getting Started Part 2: Define Goals

"A goal without a plan is just a wish." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Hi Love! Thank you for popping over to read the second part of this series to get our ducks in a row and build a strong foundation of knowledge around your brand. These discussions and exercises will inform how to develop the best strategy to attract customers/clients for your business.

If you haven't had a chance to check out part 1 which helps bring clarity to your mission, you can go here to read and see how I suggest you use the free Brand Clarity Workbook that I created for you.

Ok let's get to it. 

I remember way back when I was in one of my first Director of Marketing roles. The business was growing quickly and I think a lot of times small business owners are too busy to think through a marketing strategy. They just want results, and fast. So it means a lot of trial, error and quick pivots. However, I feel this leads to a lot of confusion and frustration for the people running marketing efforts. As much as we want the owner to be happy and for the business to be successful, we also believe patience can be a virtue. In most cases, marketing initiatives require multiple variations of testing before it can be ruled out. One single change can alter the outcome drastically. For example, the day/time you send an email blast can be huge.

So what do we do? Well, first we need to be clear about our goals. This way when we begin to develop a strategy or when we are creating a single campaign or piece of content, we can always check ourselves to ask, "Is this ___ supporting my main goal?" It will help avoid a lot of wasted time on potential projects that don't support the goal. Sometimes you have to know when to say no to efforts that are not the right move in the current state of your business.

Now, when I say "goal", I'm speaking in general terms, but it's important to break down and clear some confusion around the differences between goals, objectives, strategies and tactics.

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GOALS: The easiest way to think of a goal is that it's the "What" not the "How". Goals are what you want to accomplish as a broad primary outcome. 

Example for a children's clothing brand, their "goal" might be: To be the preferred choice of organic cotton, casual children's clothing for suburban mothers in the United States. 

It doesn't matter if the goal is lofty. The point is to keep everyone in the company focused on efforts that support this main outcome.

OBJECTIVES: Here is where we get a bit more realistic and measurable. Objectives outline necessary steps to achieve the primary goal. Think of objectives as actions, such as: increase, double, sell, deliver, convert.

Example for the same children's brand: Grow an email list of women ages 27 - 45 with children, who reside in suburban communities. 

STRATEGIES:  A strategy is the "How" and also the "Why" when it comes to fulfilling the objectives that relate to the main goal. It's both because the strategy is speaking to what the approach will be and it's why you are taking it. Might be easier to understand in the example.

Example for the children's brand: Create authority and credibility via endorsements of the clothing brand and designs by collaborating with top mom bloggers and editors.

TACTICS: These are all the action items to be fulfilled in order to carry out the strategy that will meet objectives and support the main goal.

Example list of potential tactics for the children's brand as it relates to the overall goal, objective and strategy outlined above:

1. Compile list of potential bloggers and editors for outreach.

2. Coordinate a photoshoot to showcase product.

3. Design a visual representation of collection (potentially a digital lookbook).

4. Outreach to media with pitch, imagery and offer of physical samples (or actually provide).

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Now that we have the difference between goals, objectives, strategies and tactics clear, I invite you to download my free Goal Worksheet and fill in based on your particular business.

As always, feel free to share with me via arica@writtenandstyled.com if you have questions or would like feedback. 

Don't miss Part 3 next week, where we will close out this series with a discussion all around determining your target audience and why it's so important to get clear now before you start creating content. I'll be sharing some really interesting ways to use Facebook as a tool to get tons of great data. Sign up here to be the first to know about the post. 

Cheers to creating content with clarity!

-Arica

5 Questions I Ask to Craft a Winning Marketing Strategy

Have you ever been so excited and ready to start selling your product or service, but didn't know how to put all of your ideas into action?

Have you searched online for marketing plan templates and strategy suggestions?

For me it's all about following a formula for all of my marketing efforts. It gets the process moving in a forward direction for me and my client.

My formula to begin crafting a killer marketing strategy begins with these FIVE KEY QUESTIONS:

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1. Can you describe the current situation of your business?

The first part if this discussion develops the building blocks for a standard situational analysis. The information will be placed into to a SWOT matrix (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).

2. What types of marketing are you already doing, if any? 

This information will help me to determine what assets are already available and what needs to be created to support the strategy.

3. What type of results are you looking for in your marketing? Grow a social following, drive more customers into a retail storefront, gain new leads for a sales team? 

Of course, in most cases the goal is to increase sales, but it's important to lay it all out there to help determine tactics for our strategy. 

4. Can you describe your target audience? 

This is one of the most important questions. Without understanding who your ideal customer is (a buyer persona), how can you properly determine what type of marketing tactics and messaging to use? A business may have just a few or many personas depending on the type of product or service they offer. I find it helpful to focus on the top three. 

5. What are your resources in terms of time and budget?

Understanding how involved a client will be for the implementation of marketing tactics is important to know ahead of time. In some cases, my clients prefer that I carry out most of the efforts. On the flip side, some have an internal team who I consult and support. A clear budget is necessary, but this doesn't mean you need a large one to have a successful marketing strategy. The budget should always aligned with goals to provide the best possible return on investment.

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Happy Strategizing!

- Arica