Create More Customers Podcast — Episode 131: Marketing & Sales Advice For Unlocking the Power of Segmentation (TRANSCRIPT)
In this episode you’ll hear my thoughts on:
• Categorizing ideal customers into different categories
• Using well-known frameworks to identify these categories
• Targeting product-aware customers and re-engaging with potential customers
• Escaping the commoditization of the products and services
• Creating a brand stand out in a competitive market
• Building trust and relationships by adding value before pitching
• Starting content distribution to contact customers and build a relationship with them
• Fulfilling promises and promoting prospects to build trust and relationships
• Asking for referrals and not taking a “no” as a dead-end
• Using outbound methods via LinkedIn, Twitter, email and SMS
So, listen here as I discuss these!
TRANSCRIPT:
So the way I think about ideal customers is I break them down into four different categories.
And these categories are quite well-known and used as frameworks within the marketing industry.
I didn’t make them up, they’ve been around for a really long time.
But they also map to many of the targeting capabilities within a lot of digital platforms.
So starting with geographics, where geographically is this person, this ideal customer located and that can be either online, offline, digital, non-digital, analog, and so on.
Then the next one underneath that a demographics things like age, occupation, gender, all of those kinds of things, then psychographics things that are happening within their head, worldviews, points-of-views, beliefs, that kind of thing.
And then underneath that getting even more specific, is behaviours, the actions they do, based on their psychographics.
So in that kind of filtered-down approach of geographics, demographics, psychographics, and behaviours, if you can really start to think about who that ideal customer is, in terms of those four different categories, because then that will map directly to some targeting capabilities that you’re looking for.
Now, I know you did say you have a very broad range of services, running, you know, all along the spectrum that you mentioned to me, I would highly recommend you then start to map backwards from the services that you provide.
And I’m going to jump around a little bit here.
But what I mean by that is, I want you to start, there’s another framework I’m going to give you is around awareness of solutions and products.
So this framework was not created by me.
It’s the problem awareness framework.
So it’s our people’s problem, unaware I did they don’t even need them.
Ie let me rephrase.
Do they not even know that they need a solution?
They’re just completely oblivious to what’s going on?
They’re going to be your worst kind of ideal customers, if they’re not your ideal customers, they are just, they’re not aware of their problem.
The next rung down is: are they aware that they’ve got a problem?
Now, this is kind of where you want to start your targeting.
But they’re not going to be the best the run underneath that would be are they solution aware?
In other words, are they aware of solutions, not just what you provide, but what other commercial competitors provide?
But not only that, if there’s any, you know, Frankenstein kind of piece things together, that aren’t commercial solutions, or doing nothing is also a solution.
So that’s getting slightly better than just being a problem where they’re at least they’re aware, they can go solve these problems.
But the ones I want you to target are the ones that are product aware, they’re already aware of you, but they haven’t bought yet.
So starting there, so going back through all of your inboxes, both in LinkedIn, in social media on email to see anyone that’s already reached out to you, and hasn’t converted yet, that’s where you should be spending the majority of your time at this stage, just going back and re-engaging with those people.
We can talk about that a little bit later on.
So we can put that on the back burner as well.
If you’ve already exhausted that list, then going the next rung down the one that ones that are solution aware, these customers that know they can solve their problem either through you or another competitor, or they’re, you know, piecing bits of software together, they’ve got a Google sheet here, and they’ve got a Google website that’s integrated with some and they may be using Shopify, or they’re just not doing anything, they’re too overwhelmed by all of that, that’s going to be your next area to look at.
And because you said there are so many people that map to all of these different products who you provide, that’s probably where you should stop looking probably where it’s just people know that they need one of your products, and they haven’t even started looking.
And that could be as you’ve to your point, that could be a vast majority of the population who are online.
So because what you’re offering, and I don’t mean any offence by this, I’m just putting it in terms of your products and services are commoditized.
There are definitely other providers that can provide a similar thing, the outcome or the output is actually going to look a little bit different from what other people are creating because there is some element of creativity in there, but it’s a commoditized product.
So what I want you to start thinking about is how can you become more of a brand.
Now the example I’m thinking of here is instead of reaching out to all of those target customers who you’ve already identified, reaching out to them and significantly adding value to them to start with without pitching.
Now you may know, say pitching your product or service getting there into their hands, and giving them the outcome is a value add, but they’ve actually got to pay for that.
What can you do for them?
And I’ll give you some examples.
What can you do for them, that’s going to add value?
So they already know you.
So in other words, you’re in contact with them, they start to like you, you’ve added some value, and then they’re trusting you.
You promise something, you delivered on that promise.
And now they’ve promised now they’ve got trust, all before you start pitching them on your product and service, one of the probably one of the easiest ways to do that, and I don’t know, I haven’t looked into the competition with this is starting up some sort of blog or podcast where you outreach to them and say, hey, look, we’re talking to and I can’t quite see their, what demographic or geographic or even psychographics they fit into, but whatever whichever one it is whichever demographic psychographic, because they look like they’re all South Australian, go to them and say, we’re looking to speak to people in South Australia that fit a, b, and c, you fit this kind of description, we would love to interview, you could even be a blog, actually written blog, we would like to interview you about your thoughts on X, Y, and Z.
Without pitching, what that does is a few different things that get you known.
So you’ve already got the known part, get hopefully the like part that like this person is trying to reach out to me and add value to me and try to promote what I’m doing within my business.
And then you can go do that interview, publish it, and they start to trust you you’ve already built, you fulfilled on your promise that you already made.
What it also does is then promote them, they have an incentive then to go share that with all of their friends, family and contacts, but also builds a relationship with you without you starting to pitch them, inevitably, at least a proportion, those people are going to say to you, hey, what do you do?
And then you can start the conversation around?
Well, here’s what we provide, what you’re trying to do is build a relationship with that person.
It’s not, it’s no different than what you would do.
If you went to a networking conference, or you went, you know, through dating, you’re trying to get that person to know you try to build trust with them.
Build a relationship before you go for the ask now you can still go for the asker pitch.
And they can say, Look, we don’t even need that.
You can then ask them who else fits that demographic, or geographic, psychographic, behaviour like you.
Do you know, who would potentially also need someone like this and then start to get referrals?
So it’s not a dead end.
If they say no, I definitely think outreach because you already know the advantage you’ve got is because you’re b2b, you already know who your ideal customer is.
It’s not like you’re selling bottled water.
And you know, lots of people in the world do and consume bottled water, and it’s really hard to work out which geographics, demographics psychographics and behaviours specifically relate to that person.
But you know, these people, you know, almost these people by name, but if not by name by title, whether it’s the CTO or the CEO, or the founder or the director, you know who these people are outbound is going to be the easiest win for you.
Whatever, you can use LinkedIn, absolutely.
Twitter, if you can find them on Twitter, email, as well.
Email sometimes gets caught by gatekeepers or goes into things like your junk mail, I would steer clear of phone outreach, it interrupts people, you’re not necessarily going to get through to the same person gonna get a gatekeeper as you may with email, would steer clear of outreach via telephone most people now anyway, will from the conversations I have done out.
So phone numbers, if they come from phone numbers that aren’t saved in their contact list.
For text messaging, I think that’s way too personal, especially for outreach.
You think about this kind as more of a macro, macro observation of what you probably do in your life.
Think about the types of people you SMS and what you SMS.
While you’re thinking about that, for me, at least, it’s people that are really close to me.
And it’s usually things like an article that I found that relates to them or just wishing them you know, have a great Monday or hope you’re having a great week or asking them a question, nothing, nothing, nothing.
That is along the lines of pitching or sales’y or anything like that.
If you were to go through your SMS outbox, would you be sending similar to what I just mentioned then LinkedIn is where people go for, you know, work and business-related stuff?
I think LinkedIn currently has a bit of a reputation bad reputation for people sending spammy-style, messages vile.
That’s the thing with a crowded channel once that gets crowded into a reputation for being spammy or pitchy.
Most people get turned off, even though what you’re probably offering, as we talked about before, that’s in that example what you’re offering, maybe not that at all, it’s a value add for those people that may just not get through to people.
But if you can find those people on Twitter, which is kind of almost as easy as email, you’ve got their websites, clicking onto those URLs, usually, there’s a Contact page or an email page, as well, if they if that company does have a Twitter account, you can actually send you to know, a public tweet to them, and ask them for what are the contact details for the CEO, the founder, the director, whoever, and then go from there, what you really want to be doing is asking for those contact details to that decision maker.
So if it’s idle, then just fill out just the basic details in your profile, name, description, and then your profile image.
But doesn’t matter if it’s idle, I would definitely say personal because it’s personal people relate to people, not logos, posting on LinkedIn will take a lot of time to start to get the wheels rolling.
I’d recommend you tag it with hashtags that are related, specifically around what we talked about before, you know, do the South Australian hashtag demographics geographics, sort of demographics, psychographics and behaviours, I’d definitely be finding related hashtags to that.
But also be finding hashtags related to problem awareness, solution awareness, so you know, the hashtag website, and so on as well for extra discovery, but that’s going to take a little bit more time.
If you’ve got time, do it in parallel to what we’re talking about before.
But that direct outreach is going always give you the biggest bang for your buck.
Yeah, definitely the first thing I would be doing for you would be thinking about what your offer is going to be to add value to these people you’ve already identified, you’ve already done a lot of the hard work by getting that spreadsheet of potential ideal customers, you’ve got to get their attention.
Somehow, whatever of those direct channels, we talked about whichever one if not all, but don’t do all of them at the same time, try one, wait a week.
And if you don’t hear anything back, try a different channel.
And when you think about it, this outreach, or this getting attention, I’m just using it as an interchangeable word is the same thing as buying an ad on a billboard or buying a Facebook ad or buying a LinkedIn ad, all that is trying to do is to get someone’s attention.
So you can tell them some sort of message.
And that message you’re trying to tell them is the offer?
What are you going to offer them not a sales pitch that can come way later?
What are you going to offer them, so they liked you and they trust you, they already know who you are, because you’ve sent them an email, what can you do to get and build a relationship with them?
So they can, as I said, like, and trust you, I gave you an example before about promoting them and doing that through some sort of interview, whether it’s a blog, blog, or podcast, but there are almost 1,000,001 different variations of that, depending on your level of creativity of what you can come up with to promote them.
Another idea you could potentially do, and I don’t have that list you gave me in front of you.
But depending on certain themes of who those people are, let’s just pick one, for example, they are the CEO, say so you’d say that the common theme with some of these is the CEO.
So you can potentially say the theme is South Australia and a CEO.
What could you create that is a resource for CEOs in South Australia?
Or could you promote all South Australian CEOs in a resource list, you know, that’s just two off the top of my head.
But basically, what you’re doing is creating those resources, giving it back to them and saying, Look, we have now created their CEO South strain SEO resource list, we’ve added you into it to promote you, we hope you enjoy it, and then leave it at that or the other example, doing the same thing.
And then leaving it that all you’re trying to do with this, at this stage of this offer is to get some awareness, get them to like and trust you.
So you can start to build that relationship.
So eventually, and like you’ve said before, what has worked for you, for them to start asking you about you and what you offer.
And then that leaves you down that sales conversation that you’ve been having, you know, those three or four years ago via LinkedIn when you were connecting with them, as tempting as it is just to start selling off the bat.
If you can leave that for much later on.
Start to build those relationships.
First, get awareness once you’ve got that awareness or attention from them, working out what you’re going to tell them what offer you’re going to give them then once you start to build that relationship, then the conversation inevitably turns to well, what do you do, you’re adding all this stuff to us?
You’re contacting us, what kind of stuff are you into?
Why are you creating the South Australian SEO resources?
Listen, you can say, Well, my name is so and so.
And this is the business that I have.
Do things like engineering firms within South Australia.
And then think about what can you offer these people that are going to add value to what they’re doing to their business, that you can outreach them and say, I have created this resource of benefit to in this sort of way.
We hope you like it, and then leave it like that, that then gives you an open conversation that you can then go back to and follow up with whichever channel you choose, you have chosen email, Twitter, LinkedIn, and you could even write letters, I wouldn’t advise because it’s going to cost you a lot of money in postage, but leaves that conversation open to you that you can go back in a month or a week and say, Hey, did you like the resource that we put together for you, you’ve got this in inbound inroad that you can always follow up with them, and steer the conversation towards a sales conversation where you can ultimately say, we build websites, we’ve had a look at yours.
Here are the ways, here are the ways that we think you can improve it.
For example, the one you’re showing me right now, layout and design, things that you would do for them without pitching, then based on what their feedback is, you’re trying to then qualify them to have the money, are they the right type of person is the timing right.
And then if they are qualified, then start to talk about some of the more specific details and what your commercial pitch/commercial offer is.
So these people, and to your point, I wouldn’t even spend a lot of time writing a long resource, if you can curate a lot of things that are already out there.
So you don’t need to go create it, someone’s already created the stuff just curate it and collect it all and then put it into a resource.
It’s far easier than having to sit down and create something from scratch.
Plus, it does have inherent value.
I’ve done it for so many different niches that I’m involved in, of just bringing resources together.
Just for example, one that I’ve done recently is I’m just summarizing article links, some going to a lot of publications within the niche, and taking each daily link of the things that they’re publishing, and just putting that into a daily resource.
So it’s a daily resource, resource hub link, so I don’t need to go out and write all the news articles.
I’m just collating 40 different news websites into one daily resource that gets sent out.
Then I go back to the news outlets, and I say, Look, I’ve just compiled this.
Hopefully, it gives you more readership.
So I’m trying to build relationships with these news outlets.
The number one thing for you is that offer what can you offer them, that’s going to be a value add to start building that relationship, that’s going to be the crux of everything, then you can start to write the email, copy, and then copy and paste and depending on what the feedback is or how that’s responded, you can always just update and tweak that email copy as you go out.
So don’t just send a blanket email to all of them.
So do it in batches of 10.
See what the response is and then change the wording as you move forward.
And then you’ll get better and better with your ad copy each and every time.
