This is understandable. As businesspeople, we work hard to capture our message; it’s valuable work that can only be done by internal employees who know our culture, our co-workers and our CEO. But the very insider nature of our mission statements and corporate copy can sound exclusive and clique-y to our customers.
They often don’t get the inside jokes, the clever language, the puns, metaphors or similes that we worked so hard on – for so long. If customers don’t get your copy, if it doesn’t speak in their language, you might as well not write it. And copy that only works for you simply doesn’t work!

The trick is to seek comfort where you’re not comfortable, which is usually in your target audience’s shoes. Let’s say you’ve never knitted a day in your life, secretly make fun of knitters behind their backs, talk down to them in their presence and generally just “don’t get this whole knitting thing,” but are suddenly put in charge of producing a new line of do-it-yourself manuals for, of all things, knitters.

Well, unless you get out of your knitter-doubting comfort zone but quick, your future customers will pick up on your thin knitter knowledge – but quick. The best way to do this is to switch off the comfort and welcome the uncomfortable. Immerse yourself in the world of knitting to the point that you are absolutely obnoxious about it. But you can’t just fake it; you have to open yourself up to it.

This is literally the biggest step one can take in measuring the distance between you and your audience. This is your straight line to the audience you’re targeting – and if you can’t feel comfortable in this niche, they’ll never feel comfortable buying it.

Case in point: Have you ever noticed that you’ll only see trailers for comedies before a comedy? Or previews for scary movies in front of a scary movie? That’s because like breeds like; an audience for the latest zombie offering is more likely to remember – and look forward to seeing – another zombie movie than, say, a light romantic comedy.
I’ve found that this is a great way to think about how YOU target your customers. If your product or service is the payoff after all those previews, the movie itself, then what kind of preview would be playing in front of it? Comedy? Buddy picture? Family film? Action? Adventure? Thriller?
Horror?!?

I want you to take this seriously. We often think in terms of “mission statement,” “purpose” or “elevator pitches,” but those are more company-oriented. Thinking in terms of movie trailers to describe your product or service – and, in turn, your audience – is much more customer-oriented. Your sales pitch shouldn’t be general. You need to zoom in to the core of that audience of one. Figure out the appeal of your product or service to this specific individual. In other words, “tailor your trailer.”
Movies come in genres – comedy, romance, thriller; companies come in niches – just as businesses do; for example, retail, B2B, automotive. Seeing your target audience in simpler terms is better for both of you. Be direct. Be clear. Be exciting. Learn from the movie previews. They entice the audience with clips that will appeal to their individual movie preferences.
Many movie trailers are so specific they don’t just cater to one broad genre, such as horror, sci-fi or chick-flick, they cater to one specific sub-set of one particular genre. One such example is the latest trend of adapting bestselling video games into blockbuster movies, aka Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Doom, House of the Dead and the latest entry, Hit Man.

Have you ever seen a preview for one of these movies? You can tell just who in the audience has played the game before by their almost instant, immediate response to the teaser-trailer; there is almost an electric feel to the theater as these audience members – typically young men or women in their late teens to early twenties – literally leap to their feet and cheer on their latest gaming hero.

Now, you might think that being so selective with their marketing efforts to one sub-set of the genre might alienate the rest of the audience, but the opposite is the case; the rest of us earmark the phenomenon and think to ourselves, “Well, there must be something to this if these young people are so enthusiastic about it. maybe I’ll check it out when it gets released…”
Remember: Like breeds like; find out who would like you and pitch to them. So, in other words, don’t pitch your zombie flick to an audience that’s hungry for comedy. First you have to know what you’ve got on your hands; a comedy or a scary movie.
Knowing what type of product or service you provide should seem like second nature by now, but if it really was so easy, you wouldn’t be here reading this right now because I wouldn’t have had to write it in the first place.
Let’s say you’re a shoe company. So far, so good. What kind of shoes do you sell? Dress shoes? Flip-flops? Women’s? Men’s? Sneakers? What? Athletic shoes; great. Does that tell you your audience? Hardly. I’ll grant you, nowadays pretty much everybody uses athletic shoes, but that doesn’t mean they’ll use yours.

Taking the athletic shoe analogy a little farther, ask yourself a few questions to narrow the audience:

•    Are your athletic shoes edgy enough to appeal to the teen/tween market?
•    Are they too edgy to appeal to the senior market?
•    Are they cool enough for the college crowd?
•    Are they affordable enough to cry out to urban hipsters on a budget?
•    Are they sensible enough for upscale women?
•    Are they rugged enough for working men?

Pretty confusing, isn’t it? Rejoice! There is freedom in simplicity; there is profit in specifics. For instance, let’s pick any target audience up there – seniors, career women on-the-go, weekend hikers, pick one – and you can see how focusing on that audience, and only that audience (the bull’s eye), means less time spent worrying about the other audiences (the rings around the bull’s eye).

For instance, if you pick the fairly robust target segment of weekend hikers, you can play strictly to them. With design issues, with ad copy, with graphics, with seasonal campaigns, with colors, with treads, with laces, with – well, you get the picture.
It’s all bull’s eye; all the time. Now you can finally picture the genre your product or service is in and create a “preview” that’s appropriate for fans of the genre. And remember, it’s not about recreating the blockbuster formula that works for every movie, every time.

Don’t research the top-five selling boots for weekend hikers and simply replicate their ad copy and TV spots; what works for them might not work for you, and vice versa. It’s not about copying the other guy just because it worked for them; it’s about targeting YOUR audience with YOUR message touting YOUR product.

Don’t forget our audience of one. When you can ignore all the other sub-markets for athletic shoes and visually pinpoint your genre – weekend hikers – you can now picture your audience of one; that single weekend hiker.
Now real communication can happen – and prospects can become customers. You’ve found your bull’s eye and you’re ready to take aim at it. Let the box office pour in!

TRY THIS…

Imagine your product or service is the focus of a new movie. Instead of a commercial, make a movie trailer. How will you get the audience excited enough to come back and see it?

It’s difficult to conjure up personal, unique, relevant, authentic images of your demographic, baseline, affiliate, or end-user. So don’t. Pick one person from that targeted group and focus all your energy on him or her. Maybe it’s a picture of your grandmother, or the harried businesswoman you sit next to at church every weekend, or the kid who mows your lawn, or your spouse, or her brother, or just the guy you stood behind in line at the coffee shop this morning.

Whoever you’re aiming at, make this person the sole focus of your targeting efforts. Don’t just envy those profilers you watch on TV every night, become one; compile a living profile of your audience of one. What are their habits? What are their hobbies? Where do they shop? What makes them feel comfortable, happy, safe and loved?

This is truly an audience of one, and while you may think that this is too simplistic a formula to work for you, try this little quiz and you’ll soon see it’s anything but. Below, I list some brand names of people, places, and things. As you read the following list, close your eyes and picture their unique audience of one.

•    Tony Hawk
•    Tony Bennett
•    Disney World
•    The Dallas Cowboys
•    JetBlue
•    The Black Eyed Peas
•    iPod

How’d you do? Could you picture who might buy Tony Hawk’s latest video game? What might a Dallas Cowboys fan look like? Slide a Tony Bennett CD into any sound system and who might respond favorably? What does the typical Black Eyed Peas listener wear to go out dancing at the clubs? Who is choosing to travel on JetBlue?

Maybe the world is not quite as familiar with your brand as they are the above super-brands, but at least one person should be: YOU. If you can’t define your audience of one, how will your audience ever know they’re the one? Don’t worry; The Bull’s Eye Effect will help you define the audience of one.
But first you have to Find Your Target.
Fortunately, that’s our very first step…

TRY THIS…

Flip through a magazine or watch television commercials. Make a note of the product and the message for five different ads. Then write down a description of the intended “audience of one” based on this information.

Why? Simple: blame it on the “It Just So Happens” Effect…

Now, before you ask, the “It Just So Happens” Effect states that for every nine out of ten people who throw away that furniture flyer or carpet cleaning coupon that comes in the mail, there is one person who “just so happens” to need a new piece of furniture or their carpet cleaned at the exact same moment they received or opened the flyer.
Or “It Just So Happens” that they need their:

•    Teeth whitened
•    Hair cut
•    Oil changed
•    Cruise booked
•    Gutters cleaned
•    Driveway repaved
•    Fill in the blank with what you do here…

Case in point: My friend’s wife just went back to work full-time. This was good news, great news, the best news – more money, more opportunity, more money – until the laundry started to pile up and the cupboards went bare and the floors got dirty and the toilets finally needed scrubbing. You see, my friend works from home – and while his wife was suddenly back out in the corporate world, he was left to fend for himself in the domestic jungle.

As a result, he became obsessed with household cleaning products. I don’t take words lightly; “obsessed” really is the right word here. I’d never heard him get so animated about anything as when he discovered the complete Swiffer line of products. Vacuums that dusted! Squeegees that squirted! Gloves that held static electricity! Mops that vacuumed first! Feather dusters attached to cans of spray wax! The list went on and on; you’d think it was baseball season and he was reporting the stats of the World Series pairings!

And it all started with one of those cut-out coupons in the Sunday circulars. One Swiffer ad for one Swiffer product – at the precise moment he was dreading another morning of cleaning and straightening up the house – and the rest just kind of snowballed; he was hooked. I can imagine him sitting there that very first Sunday morning, his wife sleeping late after a long work week, dust mites clinging to the hardwood floors, that big, clunky vacuum beckoning from the garage, the paper on his lap when, all of a sudden, he saw that Swiffer duster-vacuumer-squirtie-gizmo coupon and that’s when the “It Just So Happens” Effect took, well, effect!

My friend needed a quick, convenient, preferably disposable solution to his daily household cleaning chores and “It Just So Happens” there was a coupon for a quick, convenient, mostly disposable product staring back at him from some Sunday coupon book he’d probably thrown away without even looking at 4,000 Sundays in a row before.
But not this Sunday.

The “It Just So Happens” Effect keeps advertisers paying their mortgages even as our land sites fill with their product. It also keeps us buying, and before we enter the high-tech world of faith-based marketing in the chapters and sections to come, let us not snub the low-tech world of traditional advertising. Remember, it’s all just theory until the cash register rings up that first big sale. What makes it ring for you, for me, for everybody will be something different.

Until you find that “something different,” let’s not rule out anything; anything at all.

The more I used keywords like “targeted,” “marketing,” “viral” or even “sales,” the more specific my results became. I got suggestions, lists, recommendations – you name it. I could read reviews before I made an investment in this book or that – and learned to read between the lines to find true value in what I purchased. I could even buy books used; a real plus, since I bought so many – and marked them up so thoroughly.

I could find books that no local bookstore would ever stock. (Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance, 3rd Edition Revised in Large Print, anyone?) And a library? Forget it; no librarian, no matter how thick her glasses might be, could recommend similar products so astutely – or so quickly – as Amazon.com.

Shopping on Amazon wasn’t just like hitting one bull’s eye; it was like hitting a bull’s eye each time I picked up a dart – or clicked the mouse. Each search was a new target; each target came more clearly into focus with each new, valuable and personalized recommendation. In 15 minutes, I could find just as many books that went to point – and order them to arrive within 24 to 48 hours.

Now, I’m no shill for Amazon.com – and I know that, technically-speaking, those other online bookstores probably have the same amount of books, even the same titles and authors – if I wanted to spend twice as much time, energy, blood, sweat, tears and money searching them out for myself. But why would I?
And, frankly, why should I?

Amazon.com did the work for me. And why? Because that’s how they were targeting me, as a shopper who wanted selection, ease of shopping and ordering, and fast delivery. And they hit the bull’s eye dead on. So before you start targeting others, know thyself (what you want and need) and pay attention to how others have made a direct hit on those priorities. It’s easy for us as marketers to get so bogged down in what we do that we forget others are doing it, too!

It’s kind of like when you catch your doctor smoking or see your physical trainer at a fast-food joint. You feel a sense of disappointment and maybe hypocrisy. But we are all human and just because we work in a chosen profession does not always mean we live and breathe our work. I’m suggesting that, for awhile at least, you do just that: live and breathe your work!
Here are some quick tips for staying on target here:

•    Follow your clicks: When you’re using the Internet, don’t just click-through willy-nilly; follow that mouse. Where does it lead? How long does it take? Two clicks? Five clicks? Ten? Why do you click here instead of there? Now instead of then? What sites invite your business and why? We can learn a lot about how to use the Internet by paying attention to how WE use the Internet. And the best part is, you’re learning while you’re doing something you have to do anyway; kind of like being an apprentice – to yourself!

•    Read your junk mail: Instead of trashing your junk mail, read it (except for the SPAM). How is it getting to you? Why are you receiving it? Follow the leads; be a postal detective. Is a local furniture store offering you a coupon because you shopped there recently? Are you getting a coupon for next summer’s cruise because of the cruise you took last summer? Have the local businesses keyed into the fact that you are new to the area and have no retail connections yet? Don’t just study the technology that got that junk mail to you in the first place; study the psychology behind the junk mail itself.

•    Stay for the commercials: We often think that TV commercials are random; they aren’t. There’s a reason you see so many food commercials the closer it gets to the witching hour; certain companies want YOU to eat their foods for your next midnight snack! Or for tomorrow’s midnight snack. Ask yourself why the advertising pros created a certain commercial, why they bought air time on this program, at this particular time of day or night, and who do they think they’re attracting with their message. See if you can learn from their bull’s eyes AND their misses.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe in hard work. I wouldn’t be where I am, writing this blog, if I didn’t. I suppose what I also believe in is never being off the clock. That is to say, our work doesn’t end as we drive away from the office each day. In fact, if we’re true bull’s eye marketers, that’s where the real work begins.

Case in point: to know consumers, you must be a consumer. So, how do you consume? Why do you buy what you buy? Shop where you shop? Eat where and what you eat? How do you decide which movie to take your family to over the weekend? Why did you buy that particular necklace for your spouse or that pair of shoes for your child?

In other words, you made a buying decision based on certain criteria and influences. How did the marketer target YOU?

It’s not a simple question, but understanding the answer is crucial to helping you target others. One company that can help us answer this question is the same company who was so integral while doing the research for this very book: Amazon.com.

You might be surprised to know that Amazon.com has a slogan that’s quite telling about their corporate philosophy – and how they target customers. That slogan is, “Work hard, have fun, make history.” They also have a similar vision statement: “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”

Since its online debut in July 1995 under the leadership of founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com has grown from being “the world’s largest bookstore” into a service-driven leader and audience-targeting master. This was no accident.

As Bezos himself wrote in a letter to investors back in 1997, “From the beginning, our focus has been on offering our customers compelling value. We realized that the Web was, and still is, the World Wide Wait. Therefore, we set out to offer customers something they simply could not get any other way, and began serving them with books. We brought them much more selection than was possible in a physical store (our store would now occupy 6 football fields), and presented it in a useful, easy-to search, and easy-to-browse format in a store open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. We maintained a dogged focus on improving the shopping experience…”

Fortunately, not much has changed. I discovered this as I set out to learn more about targeted marketing …. (continued next time)

There is no doubt that we all yearn for more “stickiness” in our messages. But sticky to whom? Our audience? Or ourselves? In the last section we talked about speaking our audience’s language, so that should be a good indicator; what sticks to us may not necessarily stick to them.

Companies frequently get so internal that they forget the external. We get so excited about our ad copy, our product design, our packaging, our message, our website, our concept and our ideas that we forget what others think of us is what matters most when it comes to actually clicking on our site and making a purchase.

Part of that struggle for stickiness is in speaking the language of our audience; another part is in predicting what our audience will want before they even know it. This is where trends come in – and if there’s anything stickier on this planet than a hardcore trend, I’d like to know about it.

But, too often, we are content to sit back and spot a trend rather than digging more deeply to predict a trend. Following a trend is a guaranteed way NOT to hit the bull’s eye; at best, you might get lucky and land on one of the peripheral spots on the dartboard – at worst, you will miss the board, and your opportunity, altogether.

I’ll never forget the year John Grisham first published his breakthrough bestseller, The Firm. That’s because a friend of mine worked in a bookstore at the time and would report back – daily, ad nauseam, at a high pitch – about the book’s seemingly inexhaustible success. It wasn’t so much admiration that inspired these daily updates, but rather wonder and awe; he’d never quite seen anything like it.

Customer after customer, browser after browser, rushed into the store looking for The Firm. More often than not, the book would be completely sold out and my friend would recommend an equally strong substitute. For instance, Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow had been published several years earlier and was available in paperback – a substantial savings off The Firm’s current hardback edition.

No dice. Customers wanted The Firm and would accept no substitutions. But John Grisham had done more than start a trend; he single-handedly primed the pump for a whole new literary genre: the legal thriller. My friend often commented, “If only we’d seen this trend coming, we could have really cashed in.”

I would often comment to my friend, with a wry kind of smile and a knowing wink, that he should have spotted the need for such a trend long before Grisham did. After all, he worked in the ultimate reference section: a bookstore.

He could have simply wandered up and down the aisles during any one of his shifts and spotted the gaps where legal thrillers would one day dominate. But like so many of us, my Firm-envious friend was content to follow trends rather than predict them.

See the opportunities before they become a trend. Don’t sit back and wait; follow up and act. Stay on the cusp; do not sit back and follow – get out there and lead. Tweak trends, try new things, research effectively and get to know what your audience knows before they even know it.

Communication can’t be a one-way street; there must be a dialogue between both parties if either one is to benefit. So part of measuring the distance between you and your audience is learning to speak their language.

Hear me now: this DOES not mean grabbing a few buzzwords or soon-to-be-outdated slang and sprinkling them through your ad or Web copy. Nothing screams desperate like using words, phrases, or terms you don’t understand – or that aren’t authentic to your company’s message. Here’s a hint: If you’re using a term on your site that you wouldn’t use in conversation without feeling phony, delete it. You’re dealing with a very savvy online community that can see through a phony faster than you can say “my bad.”

The key is to speak on the same level with your audience, not too high or too low. Put your copy on a diet: cut out the fat phrases, starve the bloated sentences, and serve up fewer five-dollar words.

To make sure you’re speaking the audience’s language, read your copy out loud. Do you stumble? Falter? What words stop you up? Eliminate them. Don’t talk down to your audience, but speak to them in language they are comfortable using themselves.

To help you communicate more effectively with your audience, follow these five helpful hints:

1.    Read what they read: Every demographic has a canon of literature unto itself. Sports lovers have their bibles, knitters read what appeals to them, aspiring actresses follow all the Hollywood trade papers, and skater boys devour their skateboard mags faster than their wheels eat up the concrete. When you’ve isolated your audience, go one step further and identify their reading material of choice; then read it.

2.    Hear what they hear: What radio stations appeal to your core audience? Is it talk radio for your target CEOs? Is it punk rock for your surfer dudes? Is it adult contemporary for your stay-at-home moms or maybe golden oldies for the Boomer set? If you don’t know, you can’t hear; if you can’t hear, you can’t speak effectively.

3.    Watch what they watch: Get to know the viewing habits of your bull’s eye audience. Know when they are tuning in – and to what programs. Are they watching ESPN or HGTV? Are they fans of MTV or more inclined toward CNN? Who are the celebrities that appeal to them? For instance, if you don’t know the heavy hitters of the knitters, like Lily Chin and Debbie Bliss, how can you understand why they are so appealing to fiber fanatics?

4.    Know what they know: Every set, subset and sub-subset of the American public has a core set of knowledge they subscribe to. Fishermen live by the tide charts and seasonal ebb and flow of Mother Nature. Nurses get plenty of rest in advance of a full moon or holiday weekend because injuries are more frequent during these periods, piling up the patient count. As you read, watch, and hear the materials your audience devours, isolate those truisms that are repeated over and over and know them by heart. When you know what they know, you can finally speak authoritatively.

5.    Go where they go: What does your audience do? Where do they do it? What is it about this place or these places that appeals to them? Can you go there? Or at least learn about these destinations? The more time you can spend in the natural environment of your audience, the more comfortable you become there – and with them.

When you follow these five simple tips, you will better communicate with your audience in ways that sound realistic – and not regurgitated. If effective communication is key to reaching your audience, then knowing your audience is the key to effective communication.