Lessons

Lesson Info

Examples of Identifying Audiences

- [Tara] It's time to actually work through this stuff. So now that you've heard an overview, let's get into the nitty-gritty. I love nitty-gritty, I say that way too often probably, you guys are tired of it. All right, Melissa, what are all the audiences you have at your disposal? - [Melissa] Okay, I have my podcast audience, and my blog audience, my newsletter, my Facebook groups... - Ooh, I didn't mention that one, Facebook groups, perfect. - ...Facebook friends and page, Instagram, crossing over to... - That's okay. Let's bring up that next slide. Oh, look at that. I can do two things at once. All right. - Twitter... Eh. I don't really use it much, but... - Anything else? Do you have organizations that you've repeated talks at or that you've gone back to multiple times? - Not really. - That might be one, an audience that you have in the future. If you develop strategic partnerships with certain, say, local organizations because you're fairly local to here, this is a great place to ...

be doing corporate workshops here in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, and so that might be a place where you actually develop a local organization strategic partnership-based audience. - Yeah, certainly looking to develop that. Yes. - Anything else? Any other media distribution channels? - Well, I'm in certain groups like CoCommercial. No plug. - Oh, I've got plugs, don't worry. - I'm sure there are others, I'm just not thinking of them. - That's all right, we can keep thinking, too. All right, what stories do you tell that get the biggest response? - Oh, there's a story of when I quit making art at age 13. - Quit art story, great. - And how I got back to making art 15 years later, and how I quit making art for me because I had to make money for my art. So I completely stopped making art for me, and how I got back to making art later down the road, so that whole story, my journey arc. So those are big ones. What other stories? I have so many stories that I don't... - Do you have anything like the junk food story that I mentioned earlier? So... - Yes, I have so many and I'm not thinking of any of them right now. - What's a talk that you give that has a particular story in it? - Oh God. - This is why we make lists because we forget, right? These things that are so natural to us we forget, so this is a great example, actually. You not remembering right here in this moment when you're in the spotlight. It's because when you're in the spotlight, when you're hungry for the next sale you forget all your options. So the more you list these things out, the more you plan, the less likely you are to be like, "Oh, crap," when it comes to doing something that's necessary in that necessary hungry time, right? - No, this is what I do all the time in my podcast is, I tell stories and my speech is all stories, but of course, I can't remember any of them right now. - Let's move on to the next one. Maybe we'll come back to that then, but what seasonal tie-ins make sense for your offer? Do you have any? - God, have I done any seasonal tie-ins? I don't know. Certainly, there's always some holiday, I can always tie-in some holiday thing. So there's always a way to tie-in holiday stuff. - Holiday as in general holidays or holidays in the December holiday season? - December holidays there's always something, yeah. And then there's any holiday that has any gifty thing associated, there's always a way. Oh, do something nice for your mom for Mother's Day. Something like that. - Do you ever do anything for back to school? - I don't think I have. - Back to work? I'm going to write that one down for you because I think back to work, back to school is a great time for you. All right, this is a great time for me, back to work, back to school in my business, and it's not like we're doing school-related things, it's just that this is the time of the year when people are feeling energy to get back, they're excited about getting back into it. Vacations are over, they're ready to focus and so that's one I take advantage of and I think you could easily take advantage of it, too. - Yeah. - All right, and what are your communication strengths as a brand? - Anything that gets me face-to-face with people, I'm really good in front of a group. So standing up on stage or anything resembling that, so video, audio, I'm good writing as well, but best thing is up on stage, second best is video, third best is audio. - Good. We want to focus on what's most effective. There are lots of things you could do, there are lots of things you're, "I'm pretty good at that." There's plenty of that. That's not the most effective use of your time, though, right? So to go back to what I said earlier where we really don't have a very good idea of what it takes to run our businesses, you don't have time for the things that you're just okay at, or the things that, "They convert all right, that works sometimes." You don't have time for that, you only have time for the things that are most effective. So if you know that face-to-face, video, and audio are the things that are most effective, that's what you should be giving 95% of your time to. Sure, maybe you do some writing here or there because that's what's easy, maybe you're waiting for the bus, or you're watching your kids after school and you're writing something down in Evernote that eventually gets posted to your blog. I do that all the time. And that's fine, but when you're thinking about what I'm going to devote time and energy to in my plan it's going to be the things that are most effective, okay? So I think that gives us then your full list of all of your marketing assets. Now, I want to remind everyone, again, about the marketing calendar because the next step of this process is to actually go in and lay those things out month by month. So I'm going to let you go back to your seat now and let you get out of the spotlight here for a minute. Thank you for helping me illustrate all of those different points. Not only do you need to know what you're going to market when, but, like I said, you also need to know what's that warm-up going to look like? How long is it going to take me to run through this campaign? And what assets am I going to need to create that campaign? And so that's when I start breaking things down more and more. So we've already answered the question, what offer are you promoting month to month? But you probably only have maybe six of those months filled in, maybe four of those months filled in, maybe like Melissa, you are offering something once per quarter, so you've got that filled in. Now, we need to fill in the rest of the months because marketing is an all-year-long thing, and like I said, there are ups and downs, and peaks and valleys in the amount of energy that you put toward it, and the amount of effectiveness or effort that you're putting into it, but it's something that's happening all the time. So you need to know when you're ramping up for a peak and when you're coming down into a valley. And when you're ramping up for a peak and when you're coming down, it's not just the peaks and valleys, there's all the time in-between. So this is going to allow you to plan that out. Again, just at a bird's-eye view level. So look at what are the different offers that you're promoting and then in that same month what message or story are you going to tell to promote it? Are there any special events, or holidays, or seasons that you're coordinating with? And you're drawing on those lists of your marketing assets. What audience are you going to target? Maybe you do one promotion where you're just focusing on your podcast audience, and then you do another marketing campaign where you're just focusing on your email audience. Maybe you're doing those things in tandem all the time, there's no right answer here, but these are some of the different options that you have. And then what tactics are you going to use? And we're going to talk more about tactics over time, but tactics, posting to Facebook, using a webinar, those very tactical pieces of the puzzle, that is all very personalized to you. And the good news is, you guys already know how to do the tactical stuff you need to do. You know how to post to Facebook, you know how to run a webinar, and sure, you could do all of those things better, and yes, there are new things that you could learn about those tactics all the time. What you don't have lying underneath of it is the strategy, and so you're actually not making as good a use of the tactics that you have at your disposal because you don't have the strategic piece. From there, once you look it at a month-by-month basis, you're going to look and see what the flow is, all right? Look and see what the flow is, so in month two, you might be selling your big signature program, for instance. Well, in month two, you're going to have all of this filled out for that big signature program, but in month one you're not going to have an offer that you're promoting, but you're also going to have this figured out to line up or to flow into month two. Does that make sense? So that's how this calendar is going to work for you, you're going to start with figuring out which are the offers, and when are those offers that I'm going to make throughout the next 12 months? And then little bit by little bit you're going to back up and say, what stories do I need to be telling the month before I make that offer? Two months before I make that offer. Now, I realize you don't have all of the answers to those questions right now, that's what we're doing literally for the next 11 lessons, okay? So if you're thinking, "Ooh, okay, I'm getting there. I've started to get this down, but I don't know for sure." That's totally fine, that's where we're going next. Don't worry. I'm going to hold your hand. But that's the idea, you start with what you're going to sell, when, and then you start backing up and you ask yourself, how can you start making use of all of those marketing assets that you have two weeks before, one month before, eight weeks before you actually need to make that offer so that you're never playing catch-up with your marketing and you always know what's coming up next? So you can start laying things out on your calendar using post-it notes, making appointments with yourself, whatever it needs to be so that you're creating that plan for your marketing so that it's actually getting done ahead of when you need to be selling. Questions? - [Woman 1] So I think I came into this thinking...so I want to sell one-on-one programs, that's my high priority. And I think that I came in thinking that it was just going to be this even keel, always selling the one-on-one programs. And this has really opened my eyes to getting the flow a little bit. And I see that...so I help women with their relationship with food and body, and I think that seasonal tie-ins is something that's big for me. But I was originally thinking webinars every month, that kind of thing, but I can see that that can get old with then the cyclical. So I guess I'm trying to form my question, but is there any marriage between the up and down plus the steady state? Does that make sense? - Yes, absolutely. And I think the very next thing that we're going to get into is actually going to help clarify that a little bit. There are going to be marketing activities that you're doing all the time, right? For instance, we release a podcast every single week and that podcast, yes, sometimes it has ads for a CreativeLive class or for CoCommercial in it, but the podcast itself is the marketing, it's that brand awareness piece. It's just getting people comfortable with the way I think with the members of our community, with the brand of me, the brand of CoCommercial, the brand of CreativeLive. And so that stuff is pretty one note, it's pretty constant, but then within that sometimes we utilize that asset that we have in a campaign. So we might...last week our episode was about why marketing campaigns fail. And so Brigitte Lyons, a good friend of mine and the marketing director at CoCommercial and I just talked about why marketing campaigns fail and it was a direct tie-in to this class. And so we were talking about this class, talking about what people would learn so that their marketing campaigns didn't fail, right? And so that was...while it was constant it was leading into a peak, right? Or it was part of that peak and so you're probably going to be doing something very similar where you're going to have marketing that is just constant and steady and is always going out there trying to find people where they're at, attracting new people to your audience all the time. But then throughout the year there are going to be certain times and seasonal sounds great for you or that's one way you can think about it, where you're going to peak up a little bit more. Now, you have the kind of business where you're probably going to be running campaigns more frequently instead of less frequently, but those campaigns are still going to have a ramp-up and a follow-up that draws down, right? I like thinking about marketing campaigns as story arcs, actually, so rising action, climax, falling...not falling action, but falling story arc, end of the story mark...the denouement. The resolution, thank you. It's a resolution, that's a follow-up in a marketing campaign. Yours are probably just going to be a little shorter and a little...they're going to be less peaky, but they're just going to be like rolling hills. Your marketing is going to be like rolling hills, like where I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. So, yeah, you're going to have lots of rolling hills throughout the year, sometimes those peaks may get a little higher as you run into a seasonal tie-in, but other times it's just going to be that constant up and down, and up and down. But if you leave it just one note, if you try and just be flat all the time we're just having that constant call to action, book me for a session so I can sell you on this giant one-on-one program, it's going to feel one note. It's going to feel flat. Whereas when you create that rising and falling energy, it actually helps you sell more. So there are going to be times when you don't have a call to action or when you're not talking about selling your thing and it's going to feel scary at first. Because you're like, "Oh gosh, I'm not selling my thing right now." But you're going to pick up more than when you actually peak up that next time. Does that answer your question? - Yes, that's great. Thank you. - We are going to get into what that peak and valley piece actually looks like here in just a second, so that should clarify some things for you. - Great, thank you. - Truphotos asks, "How do I choose how many marketing channels to focus on?" Oh, Truphotos, this is a great question. So to focus on, I like one, maybe two marketing channels. The truth of the matter is, though, that we've got lots of different channels and it's important to realize both. It's important to know what you're going to focus on, like Melissa's focusing on webinars and it sounds like she's ramping up on Facebook advertising to get new people into those webinars. That's what she's focused on, but she also has all of these other media distribution channels to consider as well. She can do Instagram, she can do Facebook, she can do this, she can do that. And so she wants to know what all of those different things are because as your ads are utilizing all those different channels, you're warming people up so that when they eventually get to that channel that you're focused on for your marketing and for your conversion then they're ready to see that, and they're ready to take action very quickly. So know what the whole set of channels is that you have access to and that work for you, and then choose one or two to get really, really focused on.