31: How to Target Your Market

Kimberly Beer  0:00  

The Business Animal podcast is proudly sponsored by WP Engine your resource for managed WordPress hosting, and keep the premier CRM software for small business head over to TheBusinessanimal.com for the best deals on these two amazing products

 

Jaz  0:19  

Welcome to The Business Animal podcast. Saddle up for a gallop to the top of the animal industry, where you’ll learn how to tame your wild business beast with tips, techniques, and tools that will take overwhelm to obedience school, and have you wagging your tail with joy. And now your hosts Kim Beer and Cara Taylor Swift.

 

Kimberly Beer  0:41  

Hey there business animals. It’s Kim with Be More Business

 

Cara Taylor Swift  0:44  

and Cara with Fast Horse Photography and Kim I have some really exciting news to share with you and with the listeners On today’s episode. Are you ready?

 

Kimberly Beer  0:56  

I am so ready. 

 

Cara Taylor Swift  0:57  

Okay, so

 

Cara Taylor Swift  0:58  

a few months back, I entered our tiny little animal based business podcast in to a competition called The Spark Awards in the broadcasting category, which was open to podcasts. And guess what we made the top four and The Business Animal podcast is a 2021 finalist in the Spark Awards. I am so proud of us.

 

Kimberly Beer  1:20  

I am so proud of us, too. I 

 

Cara Taylor Swift  1:23  

you’re speechless. 

 

Kimberly Beer  1:24  

I am speechless. And what? Well, I’m not exactly speechless. I am super excited about this. And I am super proud of our podcast. I’m proud of both of us. And I’m proud of what we put out into the world. I love this, we just finished recording our episode on Your Why. And this fulfills a big part of my Why and that that word finalist nomination kind of validates that it’s not just me running around a muck out here and in my own world, that it’s actually touching other people and that it’s it’s definitely worthy. And I’m I’m super proud of both of us.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  2:01  

It’s so true, Kim, we have worked our butts off. And I say that in like we have had nights where we have been doing this and doing this and doing this trying to put out you know these episodes for folks. But honestly, to the listeners out there, if you all were not listening, if we weren’t seeing the downloads and hearing from you guys on the side, and in our comment sections of our, you know, our Instagram and Facebook, like honestly, we wouldn’t have the motivation to keep going, I think somedays. So thank you guys, for listening, and continuing to listen and support us. We are so excited to keep you guys posted on where we end up. We’re currently in the top four. But maybe Who knows, maybe we’ll win the whole thing. Let’s wait and see.

 

Kimberly Beer  2:43  

Who knows. Do you know what we win? We win? Surprise Yeah. With this, I have no idea. I don’t even remember, it’s been so long.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  2:51  

Oh my gosh, happy

 

Kimberly Beer  2:53  

to be nominated.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  2:54  

If we win a million dollars. If we win a million dollars, we’re going to find you all who have listened and download it and we’re going to share the wealth with you.

 

Kimberly Beer  3:02  

Absolutely, absolutely said that. Okay, that’s a big reason to subscribe, and to go to our website and sign up. It could actually have monetary value for you. So that’s, that’s awesome, though. I’m super excited about it. And we will keep you all posted in future episodes. If there’s some type of voting process.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  3:28  

Are you kidding, I’m not gonna stop talking about it, you know that. I’m not gonna be like, Hi, I’m Cara with Fast Horse Photography and The Business Animal podcast. And guess what, we’re a top four finalist in the 2021 Spark Award. That’s going to be my new tagline. I’m so excited.

 

Kimberly Beer  3:43  

Nice. I think that’s awesome. I think it’s an amazing opportunity for us to rally our listeners and definitely take the Spark Awards by storm. 

 

Cara Taylor Swift  3:55  

All right Kim, what are we actually talking about today?

 

Kimberly Beer  3:59  

We are actually talking about how to target your market and really getting to know who your ideal customer is. We talk on this show a lot about marketing because marketing one is a big part of entrepreneurship, two. It’s been a big part of my life. And it’s a lot of the conversations that I have with Cara are around marketing. It’s also usually if I asked my clients, you know, my entrepreneur or like clients that are here for entrepreneurial growth, kind of what is the one thing you feel like you don’t do well in your business? And the answer is almost always marketing is is usually the top it’s in the top three, for sure. It’s definitely winning that award and marketing is all about your customers. So that naturally is going to beg the question How much do you really know about your ideal customer and how well have you targeted your market? How well are you relating to those people that are buying your product or service. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today, the big three for today. These are three pretty actionable steps for everybody to take today. The first is to and I use this word, because I definitely am showing my woowoo side more and more in season two, but conjure conjure your customer avatar. So please do not use dark magic. But you definitely want to conjure them, we’re not going to like literally make one like a voodoo doll, but more we definitely need to know about them. 

 

Cara Taylor Swift  5:36  

That would be weird. 

 

Kimberly Beer  5:36  

Yeah, it would be weird witness, it wouldn’t be weird if it worked. Okay, anyway, back to business. Number two of the big three is to learn all about that target market. So really get to know them, I have some great resources that I want to share with people, including a unicorn resource that you may not even know exists, which will try to get one of them to be on the show at some point, they’re really hard to find. And then finally funnel down to the information that you can use and make a really good strategy using that information. And we have some great information on some things that you need to keep in mind when you are funneling that information down to exactly what you want to do to hone in on your target market. So Cara, do you have any other thoughts? Before we kind of general thoughts before we jump into how to conjure your your customer? I know you do because I see them in purple on our worksheet?

 

Cara Taylor Swift  6:38  

That’s right. That’s right. For those of you that don’t know, everything that I want to talk about is always in purple. So okay, so I always like to ask the question, why is this important for animal equine and pet based businesses to know their target market? Okay, so identifying your target market and creating a customer avatar, which we’ll talk about, it really helps your animal based business create effective marketing strategies, a target market, just to help you guys clarify what it is, is a set of individuals sharing similar needs or characteristics that you hope to serve in your business, these individuals are usually those most likely to actually make a purchase at the end of the day of your product or your service, your customer avatar helps you define exactly who you are speaking to in that market. I love this because without an avatar and without my avatar and thinking about my avatar, it can literally be a case of trying to speak to everyone and ending up speaking to no one. So I love this so much because of that. And we’re gonna jump into our big three. The first one, of course, is conjure, your customer avatar. And I actually went through this process a couple of years ago, when I was working to update my branding and website messaging and just messaging in general, I was working with Maredith Davis Design who focuses on the equine industry, and I love her so much, but she made me sit down and go through the process of creating an avatar. And it really got my brain right around my messaging. And I love it so much. So this is an awesome exercise for anyone out there who’s working in animal based business and is really trying to like figure out their marketing and their messaging,

 

Kimberly Beer  8:14  

absolutely. And conjuring your customer avatar guides, you can make this as simple or as complex as you want to, to be honest, the more you thought you put into it, the actually the better you get at it. So if you want to go into this whole hog, don’t feel Don’t feel bad. However, if you’re one of those folks is just like I just I’m gonna think about this a little bit. That’s okay, too. It’s better that you think about it a little bit than not thinking about it at all. I know business owners that their customer avatars have names, they know every single thing about them. They know all of their demographics for their family, they know every little thing about that particular individual they they may even literally have pictures that they have styled or designed around that person. A fun exercise I like to give my clients when they’re thinking about their customer avatar is to go find those elusive print magazines which are harder and harder to come by these days that you believe your clients would be reading your your perfect customer Avatar and make a customer avatar inspiration board around your business. So you can really take this a long way if you like visual crafts and cutting stuff out making collages. This is a really good excuse to get very creative with this. If you like to write you can write down this information. I’m going to share a really long and detailed worksheet in the show notes that you may or may not want to complete. I had a client that asked me for a really, really detailed way to build out a customer Avatar and I wrote that out for them. I will tell you, I would never ever really complete that whole thing for my own business. It is like super detailed. But hey, I fulfilled that particular request for that customer, they did it and loved it. So more power to anyone who has that type of ambition where this is concerned, I am more much more likely to cut the magazine pictures out at any rate, really getting to know your customer Avatar and making that a pinpoint for how you’re going to gear your marketing. It makes your marketing easier. In my opinion, if you have that customer avatar in mind, they have a name your right and your marketing for Gladys or whoever you name your avatar that it’s an easier trip for you to gear your languaging and to gear, your imagery and all of that towards that customer avatar. Does your avatar have a name? Cara?

 

Cara Taylor Swift  10:51  

my avatar doesn’t have a name, but she knows how she likes to spend her free time. Let’s just say that.

 

Kimberly Beer  10:58  

That’s awesome. 

 

Cara Taylor Swift  11:00  

I was pretty detailed, I had a lot of fun. 

 

Kimberly Beer  11:02  

It’s important in your business, because you have a different business model than than other photographers do. You have a very specific business model and you have a very specific client that you’re looking for, in my business I do as well, I am definitely looking for a very specific client that really fits into my programs, and really benefits from them. So I think that it’s important to really hone in on that it really does make life a lot easier. So where do you get started with this. And the way that I like to tell people to get started with it is if you’ve been in business for any length of time, you probably have at least one customer that you really love to work with. They’re the person that when you see them walk through your door, or you see their phone number pop up on your phone, that you really don’t mind answering it or you’re you’re excited that they’re there because they’re no stress, they’re good revenue, they’re always good at supporting your business, they’re positive, and you feel that whatever you’re doing, whether it’s a grooming their dog, or trimming their horses feet, or training their horse or fitting them with a saddle pad or taking their photo, no matter what it is that that person is going to be happy with what you do, and you’re really happy. It just feels like it really meshes and it works out really well. That person is your ideal customer. That’s the person that in my opinion, you need to go study really carefully and figure out who they are because they’re real life walking avatar for your customer target market. What are your thoughts around that? Cara? How do you suggest people get started?

 

Cara Taylor Swift  12:50  

Yeah, no, I do the same thing. I say Think about your favorite customers, your best customers, the customers who have, you know, if you’ve got different tiers, or different types of product packages, maybe the clients that purchased your higher priced packaging, you know, the ones that really appreciated the work that you did for them, those are the people that you want to see more of. And I love this exercise because it also makes you think about those people that are not your ideal client. And I really like that and I tell people all the time, it’s okay to like, really niche down that avatar. Oh, Kim said given a name if you want but really identify the things that that person likes to do, how they spend their free time, maybe the brands of clothing they wear I know this all sounds silly, you know how they like to ride their horses, the discipline that they ride, all of that pure working in the equine industry. But yeah, I’m right there with you. But I like that it you’re finding your target person, but you’re also kind of weeding out those people that maybe maybe they’re not your client too, so it’s okay to do both. 

 

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Kimberly Beer  14:37  

You’re unideal client, you’re unideal customer avatar, the anti the upside down world of the customer avatar. And what’s funny is when you do this exercise sometimes if you’ve been in business for a small period of time, at least what you find may surprise you. If You really start looking at your customer base and saying, yes, this is my target market, when you go through the process of writing a business plan, which hopefully you guys have done that at some point in time in your business, I highly recommended if you haven’t, even if you’re not going for a loan or anything, having a business plan is beneficial. But chances are, if you went into business, not by the seat of your pants, like I did, with a little bit more organization, you probably did some target market research when you were creating your business plan, or at least you did some target market research, when you were wanting to get your business idea up and going. What I find interesting in entrepreneurship is that I watch my clients go through that process of writing the business plan, thinking about who is going to be their target market, and then watching that all shift when they really start doing their business. So the people in your business that are the ones that stress you out, sometimes those are the people that you originally wrote down, you thought would be a good fit. But then it turns out that this whole other person showed up in that process that really is the perfect fit. So don’t get so attached to what you put down on a piece of paper, when you are starting your business. Look at what makes you feel good in your business. Now, who are those people who is that person that makes you extremely happy? If you’re an artist, I can guarantee you, if you put your art out there, you have a patron, and we’re going to go beyond mom, dad, sister, cousin, aunt. But you’re going to have a patron somebody who’s shown up in and just loves your work and constantly raves about you and shares it on social media. That’s the person that you want to start looking at as your ideal customer avatar, if you’re an artist. So it Every business has those, find those people, they’re the people who go out and tell everybody about you who buy things, if you have a new product come out, they’re the first person in line and don’t take the person who walks through the door and sees you have a new product, and then immediately starts to pick it apart and say you should have done this, or you should have done that. Or who says you know, if it were mine, or you don’t pay their bills, or who constantly complain, or who never talk about you on social media, or you know, those kind of people hate to say this, but you don’t need that kind of negativity and bless and release them back out into the world to find their perfect fit to where they can be with a company that they don’t feel like they have to make adjustments or changes to it. Got on my soapbox a little bit didn’t I.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  17:53  

Well, I think that moves us though into the big three number two, which is learn all about your target market. I think that moves us there pretty easily. And I definitely when I went through this process myself, I got super detailed and thinking about things as specific as you know, the age of my ideal client of their gender, their education, their income level. I mean, I was really detailed about all of that and thinking through some of those things. What do you think about that Kim?

 

Kimberly Beer  18:21  

I think it’s really important, and I’ve got some categories for people. Before we dive into the categories, I want to want to make one mention of a very important caveat in this process. For some of you, your ideal customer is not necessarily your ideal target market. They’re not one in the same individual. For example, you may serve your customer but the person who purchases It is not that person. So for example, if you give horseback riding lessons to kids, mom is the target market or dad in by the way, there’s a lot of things that we feel like we’re excluding people for in this target market process. It’s a good thing to exclude people to narrow it down to say yes, most of the time it’s mom that brings kids to a riding lesson and no we don’t want to say Hey, no men can look at this ad no dads, but in general it’s mom that drives the kids to the to the riding lessons or who who chooses to help.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  19:24  

Right so your marketing is targeted to mom who’s going to see it and who’s going to pay the bill you know or to dad who sees and is going to pay the bill that’s

 

Kimberly Beer  19:32  

right not to the kid the kid the customer though that you’ve got to keep happy and you’ve got to you actually work with is the kid so just make sure you draw that difference in how we’re doing it. The things we’re talking about our targets a good market, these are people that you’re selling stuff to. So to me, there’s four categories that you need to look at rather deeply when it comes to your target market. The first one is the one carry I just mentioned, which is demographics. So demographics is usually pretty easy. There’s an age range, gender, education, income level location. And those may play different levels of importance in your market research. So if you work with people all over the world location isn’t important. But maybe you have a product that is relatively expensive. So income level does make a difference. Maybe it’s not something where it’s gender specific, or so much gender specific, that you’re targeting a specific, like men or women, or LGBTQ, or something like that. You are targeting all human beings, but they’re going to be in a certain age group, or they’re going to be in a certain location. So you have to look at the demographics that matter. Now, where are your avatar in and of itself, you should pick an actual age, gender education, you should answer these questions, but some of them are going to play more weight in your marketing than others. The second category is personality, so that that individual style attitude and their cultural connections, those are all really important. You know, for me, I do a very professional job in boots, you know, and not boots with I heals my clients that appeals to them. And and I want to have clients where I can walk into their office with my riding boots on because that’s who I am. That’s the kind of client that I want to have and appeal to I’m not necessarily for that really highly corporate entrepreneur who, you know, just created the next $10 billion startup, I’m for the the animal based business out there who, that’s what they expect. So look at that. I also am not for people who weren’t really highly, highly, I don’t know how to say it

 

Cara Taylor Swift  22:04  

just to say it in a clean way. So we don’t have to change our podcast. Okay, clean podcast, let’s keep it that way.

 

Kimberly Beer  22:15  

I say bad words, I, I don’t want a customer in in my world that gets upset if I drop an F bomb in the middle of a consulting session, you know, so I I’m okay with that. I’m also a little as we’ve all defined to this season, a little out there in the woowoo area, I want to be able to invite my muse to meetings and not be judged for it. So I it’s important, it’s important that my clients have that my customer avatar be at least accepting of those things, personality, again, style, attitude, cultural connections, that kind of stuff. Then you also want to look at intrinsic traits, such as values that plays a big role in in a lot of my customers. So for me, personally, I work with mission driven entrepreneurs. So there’s a great deal to do with their value. Because if they’re not passionate about their project, if this is all about the money and creating that, you know, next multimillion dollar startup business, I ain’t interested in it, I want to be there with him for the long haul. My systems don’t work that way. They just don’t fit. So intrinsic traits, values, religion, vision, desires, goals, motivations, all of those are really important. Some people it’s very important that they maybe they have a Christian based business and they want to work with Christian folks, that’s an important piece of it. And all of these answers to these questions, by the way, they’re right. You can’t make a mistake here because you’re finding your perfect target market. Alright, the final is affiliations that you should know about your customer avatar, what groups do they belong to what organizations are they part of what social channels? Are they part of what networks do they participate in? Do you have anything to add to that Cara?

 

Cara Taylor Swift  24:08  

No, I’m just I’m just taking it all in. I think that these four areas, you know, I tend to lump them all together. And I really love how this is broken up because it kind of makes you think outside of the demographics part of it. So I like this a lot.

 

Kimberly Beer  24:24  

Yeah, outside demographics are only the very first thing in really getting to know your customer avatar. They’re the very base piece of it. And the truth is, is that these four areas to me this makes up what you need to know to market correctly. So if you know these four categories about your your customers, you will know what images to pick to put in your marketing target marketing. Marketing, in general tends to be subtle, right? It’s not always hit people over the head with something to say we’re looking for winning. Men who have children who want to take riding lessons No. So what you look at is what would your customer avatar find attractive, so a happy smiling child that is on the horse, that is the correct discipline for whoever they are. So if it’s English, it’s an you know, kids when they’re writing habit with a helmet and an English saddle on a cute little pony. If it’s Western, maybe that kid is loping with a with, you know, on a horse with a nice Western saddle and has a smile on their face, because that’s what mom wants, right is for the kid to be happy. So you’ve got to look at that these these four areas they give you, they give you what you need to know to pick the images, they give you what you need to know to pick the language, they give you what you need to know to be able to determine when you’re buying the ad in on social media or placing it in a magazine or another public place. Where is that? You know what, what social networks, then then further than that, like, if you’re buying ads on Instagram, or Facebook, you can narrow the audience down by this information that you know about your customer avatar. So doing this exercise, it’s more than just kind of keep you busy exercise, it definitely is useful when you go to purchase advertising or when you go to place an ad design an ad work with an ad designer, write the copy for your website, write a brochure just everywhere. It’s literally useful everywhere create your marketing images. Absolutely. So the question that you may have now is okay, that’s great. I’m sold. Where do I find all of this information. And this is where I want to introduce you to a bunch of different resources. So this is also where I’m going to talk about that special unicorn that I happen to know personally, customer interviews are a great place to start. So pick that customer that you love when they walk through the door and ask them questions, surveys, polls, networking, social media, all of those are great places for you. I know, I personally know Cara likes to look at the social media of her customers. She socially shadows, we definitely don’t stalk we shadow, our best customers and I do the same thing. It’s important that you know that because who they are is is an impact on on how you’re going to target your marketing down the road. But there’s also a couple of other places that you can go and there is a special unicorn out in the world that will help you it is called a resource librarian. So the fact that all of these things are so important to all businesses means that they’re of people who have dedicated their lives to researching this stuff, and to also imparting that information to other people.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  27:56  

Wow, where do you find them at?

 

Kimberly Beer  27:58  

You find them in the back of the library?

 

Cara Taylor Swift  28:00  

I need to know where do you find in the back of the library and the back of this special resource library and unicorn is held?

 

Kimberly Beer  28:07  

Yes. So they’re usually in the back of the library. And the the magic words that you ask for is can I talk to the Business Resource librarian because that’s literally like their job title I get hired by the reason why I call them special unicorns is because I love my resource librarians, I actually work relatively closely with a couple of different organizations in Kansas City, that are associated with libraries. And each of those library organizations has a very specific resource librarian that they hook people up with. And I cannot even begin to tell you all of the things that these resource librarians know about people in their own communities and actually have access to information from across the country and across the world as well. But they have databases that they will be able to pinpoint and show you like how many people in your community would fit your customer avatar right down to all of those things that we just talked about. So they can sort all that information out. They can tell you how big of a population that you’re looking at for your specific customer avatar so you can judge Okay, if there’s 100,000 people and I get 1% and I have four competitive businesses, that would be one person, you know, is there a big enough population to serve us all in my specific zip code? How big do I have to go out in a service area to be able to get the number of people I need to get to be able to support my business financially the way I want it to be supported. Okay, all of that has to do with numbers and lots of computer data and crunching things which are what resource librarians are really good at getting you the information and they also have knowledge of the other business consultants in your area. area that would be able to help you with furthering that information, which for me, and you’ve heard me talk about these organizations before our SCORE, and the Small Business Administration’s Development centers. So they’re usually SBDCs, or sb tdcs, that are usually attached to a university. So all of these people work within a network of each other. It really is magical, when you can get to sit down with one. So I highly recommend going and finding your own special unicorn resource librarian in your area and chatting with them about what they have available to them as far as resources to help you with this research and information. 

 

Hey, business animals, Kim here more women than ever are starting businesses yet so few are sharing how they do it. Why? because being a successful female entrepreneur is hard work and comes with a unique set of challenges. That’s why I joined forces with 20 other women to write the female entrepreneurs playbook where we reveal our secrets to building a business that complements and enhances our lifestyle. Each chapter is written by a different female entrepreneur, including one by me, who gives candid and advice field answers to empower women to lean into their zone of genius and create the business they love. Plus, if you preorder before October 12, your 99 cent coffee will entitle you to over 1500 dollars in entrepreneurial resources, those resources are delivered straight to your inbox. As soon as you hit the preorder button, get your copy now by searching the female entrepreneurs playbook on Amazon or heading over to The Business Animal website and clicking on the button under the deals for this episode.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  31:50  

That’s incredible. Because when you think about all of the work that goes into learning about your target market, and a lot of it, you know, if you didn’t know, these options, were out there, like think about how much time you know, small businesses are spending doing this when they could just walk down, you know, pick up the phone and contact a Business Resource Librarian and and have half of that work pretty much done for them. It sounds like so that’s pretty incredible. And I didn’t know about that unicorn. So I’m excited that you share that with me, but also with the other animal based businesses that listen to the show.

 

Kimberly Beer  32:20  

Yeah, they’re an interesting individual. And what’s so much fun about it is that it doesn’t you don’t have to pay them being there. They’re there as part of a community service. And that’s what they’re there for you my friends out there listening are their target market. So definitely take advantage of this. It’s It’s really cool. So call your the way the find them did if you didn’t get it already is you call your local library and ask them how do I get in touch with the resource librarian for whatever library system it is that you’re working with. And if you happen to live in the lovely Kansas City area, we have so many good library systems here and so many good resource librarians, so maybe eventually, we can get one on the show. And they can share exactly what it is that they have to offer back there. But I can tell you this, it’s going to blow your mind when you figure out all the different databases there are out there that you can research in that the library has access to that you can’t get access to just off of Google. So you have to have a you have to have a special password That’s incredible. Which I would have forgotten anyway. So even if I had it. So finally, once you get all of that research done, we step into the third of the big three, which is funneling down that information into stuff that you can use. So the resource librarian is definitely going to load you up any of those other resources. If you go through where you look at all of the different demographic information for several of your clients, at least you’re going to have a lot of data. And the first thing you want to look for across that data is commonalities, what are things that everybody tends to share. And those are really important points that you should highlight. You should also look at trigger points that everyone shares, you know, pains and gains, things that people are trying to attain and pain points that they’re trying to get away from. And always remember the pain points carry more weight in marketing and sales than the gain points do and then where people align in vision and values. Because those are things that you can utilize in your advertising. And then also look at the outliers, things that don’t make sense or that that’s just special to that individual that you wouldn’t see as a commonality across the board. And you might want to make a note of that so that you don’t include that in your avatar and Information accidently because that person is an outlier. So that’s a quick little rundown of how to funnel out that information and cure, I know you have something you want to add here.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  35:13  

Yeah, I mean, this is your content creation, this is your messaging, all of this comes down to you’ve worked, and you’ve funneled it down to this third of the big three. And now this is where you start the creating side of things. So this is where you start creating your marketing. This is where you can start, you know, if you’re doing social media content, this is where you’re going to speak to those people. And really those people alone, like you want to have a very focused message then at this point, and that that even triggers like for me, as an equine, an equestrian photographer, like, I want to show images of people that I hope to serve, at some point, you know, if all of my images were of young people, then I probably would be less likely to photograph older people or women in their middle age, you know, they’re middle aged, or families, you know, so you really thinking about who that is for you. And that can include something like you know, the types of animals that you want to work with show imagery and talk and speak to those people about the type of type of animals the even as specific as the breeds of horses that you hope to work with, or riding discipline. So I just think that this is where your messaging comes in. And you’ve done all this work. And so now this information that you’ve gained is your next step. This is where you start creating your content and your messaging and your marketing.

 

Kimberly Beer  36:25  

Absolutely, people want to be able to see themselves in the images and relate to the words on your website. And if they don’t see themselves in there, they are less likely to pull the trigger, that does not mean that they are not going to do it, it just means that they’re less likely to be able to do it. If you present a very clear, targeted message, people can attach to it much easier than they can if it’s super broad. And I think we made that point at the beginning. But I think it bears repeating the very specific message and that people really do want to see themselves in your site. That’s one of the reasons why it is so important to just be cognizant of all of the different people that you want to work with. And what are the ideal things that you want to hit in your marketing that are really important. And then how can you show the diversity in the other pieces that may be art. One other thing that I wanted to talk about is bias in this process. So because you are not a scientific researcher, and you’re a human being, and you definitely have biases towards the customer that you believe you want work that you’ve kind of convinced yourself that you want, you need to be careful of bringing your own bias into the research. And also, especially when you’re using it to funnel this information down into what information you choose to kind of cherry pick out of what you get, because it’s a big pile of information. And you’re gonna have to choose some pieces in there. And I see a lot of times people have bias in the choices that they make, because they’re kind of cherry picking the ones that they believe that their paradigm of of the customer that they want. The thing is, is when usually when that happens, here’s what happens to your marketing, you put your marketing out there and it doesn’t work. And you’re like I’m doing all of the things, right, I’m checking all of the boxes, I’ve gone through my customer avatar really targeted my messaging towards this particular avatar, I’m buying the correct ads on Facebook, I’m putting myself in these specific positions. I always when people say that’s not working, what I want to do is I want to go back and I want to take a look to see if they included bias. And a lot of times it’s it’s subconscious, you use subconsciously until it’s pointed out to you that you have a bias you just don’t get it. But I look for that bias as a first line course correction to say, you know, have you changed or altered or otherwise manipulated the information that your customers gave you regarding their commonalities. In other words, have you changed the script? They said, blah, blah, blah, and you changed it to blah, blah, blah. You know, I mean, it can be so very, very subtle in how your bias shows up in this process, but it happens a lot. So if you go through this, you’re putting your marketing out there, it’s been a few months marketing is not magic. You don’t put one ad out and all of a sudden have all of your your ideal customer shows up at your door. It’s a long term marathon project.  But if you are, you know a while into this and you’re just not seeing the results You want and you feel like you’re checking all of those boxes, come back to this particular exercise of really getting to know your ideal customer, and then check your bias at the door and really allow the data to give you the answers, even though if it’s sometimes not the answer that you were expecting, or maybe even wanting, that’s my my final two cents on how to funnel that information down.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  40:26  

Excellent. So I think some folks out there may have some homework cut out for them. What do you think?

 

Kimberly Beer  40:31  

I do, too, I think they’d first thing they need to do is well pick their favorite customer, and then go see the resource library and don’t take the customer with you just go see the resource.

 

Cara Taylor Swift  40:40  

I love that I that’s the one thing I didn’t do. Yeah, that was that was something I didn’t do when I was working on my target market. And my customer avatar, like I didn’t even know that was an option. So I’m feeling pretty awesome about learning that today. And I kind of want to fact check what I think I know, you know. So I talked about that. So I would love to hear from your resource

 

Kimberly Beer  41:03  

librarian,

 

Cara Taylor Swift  41:04  

right. So we’re gonna go for our big three again, real quick. But I would also love to hear from you guys on Have you done this work? First of all, like, do you have a target market? Have you done the work? Do you have a client avatar? Do you know who that person is? And are you speaking to them specifically in your marketing? But I also would love to know, have you found your Business Resource Library, and yet, like Kim has mentioned, and I know we also have a pretty generous audience that is not US based as well. And I’m wondering, do you have something like this, you know, where you live, where you’re getting this information. So our big theme for this week, in terms of how to target your market, find your customer avatar is to conjure your customer avatar, which we’ve talked about, like think about who that person is and get really in depth detailing about that. Learn about your target market, things like demographics, personality, intrinsic traits, and affiliations and then funnel down to that information that you can actually use and then start putting it to work. You know, you’ve you’ve done all this work. Now let’s see what happens when you actually put it to work.

 

Kimberly Beer  42:07  

Yeah, let us know. Let us know what the results were from walking through this as well. I am definitely excited to hear from people about what the results from those three steps will net them. Thank you guys. Have a great rest of your day, and we’ll see you next week on The Business Animal.

 

Jaz  42:25  

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Business Animal. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you learned something today, leave us a review. To learn more. Find us at The Business animal.com we’d love to hear from you. Until next time, keep your business well trained with The Business Animal

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai