Why you need to put your audience at the heart of your communication
Successful communication hinges on knowing your audience
Is there a particular person whose face springs to mind when you sit down to write your blog, social media caption, or website (delete as applicable) or is it a blend of different people? A picture that you’ve built up over time. A picture that was once sharp and in focus but is now blurred round the edges.
Putting the audience at the heart of your communication is the first step in creating messages that land, whether your audience is clients, customers or employees.
I remember my first day at Whitbread as a communication consultant back in the mid 1990s. Waiting for me on my desk that first morning was a very thick, detailed document. Several inches thick in fact, printed on blue paper. It was a detailed employee research document.
My first job that day, and the days that followed was to read and digest the findings. Thankfully my boss had already read it and put stickies on the pages she really wanted me to read. But the message was clear. Before you do anything, write any words, choose any media. Know your audience.
The insight in that document shaped our communication strategy. At each stage, each decision made, we went back to the evidence – what were our employees telling us?
My audience in this case was employees – all 80,000 of them working in pubs, restaurants, coffee shops, hotels and leisure centres up and down the UK. Your audience will be unique to you and your business, but that doesn’t matter, they’re still people and you still need to know who they are.
Why does knowing your audience matter?
It matters because we need our messages to be read, understood and for there to be a response.
What do you want your reader to know, feel and do?
We talk a lot about businesses creating connection and building communities but for that to happen we need to know who these people are. We need to understand them and know what makes them tick so that we can create messages that speak to them.
Bottom line – you need to know who you’re communicating with or you might as well just grab a megaphone, stand in the middle of town and shout, hoping for the best. Yes, some people will hear you but, in all likelihood, it’ll be the wrong people. At the wrong time.
Challenge your assumptions
Let’s start by challenging what you think you know about your audience. From working with my clients – mostly small business owners – I know that they have an encyclopaedic knowledge of their clients built up through conversations, feedback and testimonials over the years. Add in analytics and insights from digital marketing and you can build a pretty accurate picture of who your audience.
But it’s easy to become complacent. A recent conversation with one client might overshadow a conversation with another with a differing attitude. It might be more convenient to remember an opinion that chimes with your own view of your business. And sometimes you can’t see the similarity between clients, maybe because they are from different demographics. This is why you need to consider psychographics – the factors influencing your clients’ behaviour as well as their lifestyle, life stage and work habits.
Buying decisions are complex and confused even when it’s buying a tin of baked beans
Let’s do a practical exercise that will shift our heads into a new space. In writing this blog, I dug out my old copy of Marketing, by David Mercer and looked up the chapter on ‘The customer’. It’s 36 pages long and is full of great content about customer behaviour, but this exercise jumped out at me, so I’ll share it here and ask you to have a go. It’ll help you to think about the factors that influence your buying behaviour.
Bottom line – you need to know who you’re communicating with or you might as well just grab a megaphone, stand in the middle of town and shout, hoping for the best.
10-minute Exercise (grab a pen or pencil and piece of paper)
I want you to think back to your most recent purchases. Choose one repeat purchase, like a food shop at the supermarket. And choose another, maybe something you bought for the house or an item of clothing.
For each of these purchases, write down how you came to make the purchase and why that brand. Think about:
- How did you decide you needed that product or service?
- How long did you take to make the purchase?
- Was it an automatic or impulse buy?
- Did you choose the brand because it was the only one available, the best on offer or did you hunt it down?
- How important was it that the product or service fitted your lifestyle?
- Did you consider any alternatives?
Complicated isn’t it? Even buying a can of baked beans is fraught, there are so many influencing factors at play. Now think about things from your client’s perspective.
Simple tasks you can do today:
- Email a few clients and ask if they have five minutes for a chat. Maybe choose people you haven’t spoken to for a while. Ask open ended questions that focus on them, how things have been since you spoke and worked together.
- Listen out for the words, phrases and messages: what unites these conversations, what words and phrases keep cropping up and where are the gaps and differences?
- Compare those words with your recent messages. Do they match? Where are the gaps and opportunities?
- Dive into your analytics and insight – spend time digging into your social media insights, your website and email newsletter analytics. Make time to review and spot trends and changes.
- Email me for a client persona template – I’ve developed one that covers both demographics and psychographics.
What does this mean for you and your messages?
I’m not saying you need to rip up everything you’ve communicated to date and start again. That body of knowledge and insight you’ve built up already is invaluable. I’m asking you to challenge those thoughts, apply some analysis and ask yourself how this fresh insight tallies with your recent communication?
Are your messages answering the questions your clients are asking? Setting aside even half an hour to complete an ideal client form is a start not least because it’ll give you the nudges and prompts to think analytically.
Further Reading
Marketing, David Mercer (Published by Blackwell Business)
How to use psychographics in your marketing: A beginners guide (HubSpot is a brilliant resource, loads of practical guides and blogs on all things digital marketing
