We’ve all heard that we should start with “why.” However, when it comes to EDO marketing, publicity, proposal submissions, and networking, you must start with your “who”!
Each audience that an EDO must communicate with has different goals, needs, and challenges that you must communicate uniquely with to be effective.
How are you communicating with…
- Your key stakeholders?
- Prospectives looking at your community?
- Existing businesses?
- Existing or potential workforce?
You can’t communicate with everyone ALL the time. And when you try to, often marketing falls flat.
Now, I’ve had a lot of conversations with people about the challenge of identifying your target customer.
People say to me, “My target audience is EVERYONE!”
And maybe you DO have a broad audience of people you want to reach…
But you still need to get specific with each different initiative you employ.
Get specific and create a “persona” for your ideal customer in each audience. This will help you to connect emotionally with them. Here’s how you can do that:
Step 1: Identify ALL of your different audiences. Who is in your existing community? Who is the future workforce you want to attract?
Step 2: Choose ONE audience to focus on for a marketing initiative. Then create your “ideal customer avatar” in that audience.
- What is their occupation? Income? Age? Location?
- What are their particular needs and challenges?
- What platforms are they hanging out on?
Once you know WHO you want to speak to, then you can create campaigns for those audiences on the platforms they are spending time on.
Often it can be difficult to understand our target market if they are a lot different from us.
What you can do is bring someone in from that target audience so you can pick their brain. For example, if you want to reach millenials, you could bring in a college intern.
By taking time to Start With Who, you can make a bigger impact on your audience — and your results.
Have you ever tried “Starting With Who?” Where do you get stuck in the process? How does this process help you? Leave a comment to share with me! 🙂
‘Til next time,
Sandy
