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7 Steps for
Pinpointing Your Audience and
Designing Your Offerings (Part 1)
by Adele Sommers
How do you create
an irresistible personal connection with your audience?
One that’s strong enough to grab your prospects
by the eyeballs, ears, or fingertips and draw them magnetically
into your sphere of influence?
Whether you seek
customers, clients, subscribers, project collaborators,
students, or affiliates, I offer seven recommendations
for identifying your audiences, discovering the most
compelling ways to speak to them, and then using the
information you gather to create your book, product,
service, Web site, or custom solution.
The twist in this
process is that you actually reverse the order
of what most people might do to develop an offering.
Instead of creating it and then doing the marketing
work, this sequence involves completing certain marketing
exercises first, and then using the results to develop
your offering. This article, Part 1 in a series,
describes the first three of seven steps you
might take:
1. Identify one
or more potential audiences
2. Interview your real or imagined prospects
3. Write a mission statement for your offering
4. List the features and benefits of your offering
5. Write hypothetical “testimonials” for your
offering
6. Use all of the above to develop the actual offering
7. Invent a compelling title for your offering
Step 1: Identify
One or More Potential Audiences
To start off the
process, I recommend brainstorming the types of general
audiences you already serve, or might want to serve.
 Depending
on your industry, you could be aiming for people interested
in food, health, fitness, finance, cars, sports, child
care, hobbies, crafts, gardening, job seeking, library
science, marketing, human resources, process improvement,
project management, or whatever your situation dictates.
The more narrowly you can define your domain,
the better.
Many people would
stop there, without drilling deeper. Within each domain,
however, lies a range of specialized sub-audiences,
all of whom might be interested in aspects of what you
have to offer. They comprise distinct — and possibly
separate — slants or perspectives that your offerings
and marketing outreach eventually might address.
For example, in
my area of business achievement, sub-audiences include
CEOs and business owners, entrepreneurs, independent
professionals, supervisors, managers, generalists, specialists,
students, academicians, nonprofit groups, and affiliates.
One of my primary audiences is small companies with
10-50 people.
Step 2: Interview
Your Real or Imagined Prospects
If you have an
existing audience base, such as a list of newsletter
subscribers, clients, or customers, you can poll
them to ask for their “burning questions”
or problems related to your topic. You can collect responses
using a Web site form or survey service, an e-mail campaign,
or during classes or teleseminars. That way, you can
build a list of specific issues to address in your upcoming
material or solution.
Whether or not you
already have an audience base, you can identify one
or more fictitious characters who represent your
audience, known as personas. These characters
embody the typical customers or clients for your product,
service, Web site, or custom solution. You might select
a few to develop in depth.
To make them as
realistic as possible, give your personas names,
genders, ages, professional or personal roles, friends
and families, hobbies, educational backgrounds, and
major challenges. After identifying a few, I like to
“interview” them. I let them tell an entire
story about their circumstances, career situations,
personal concerns, or whatever else “comes up.”
I write a detailed story about each person.
 For
example, my primary persona's name is Barbara Markey.
She's a multi-talented, 37-year-old software professional
with a graphic design and technical communication background.
Barbara and her husband Ben go on camping trips, hike
regularly with their two dogs, and enjoy gardening and
outdoor crafts.
Barbara has earned
a stellar reputation at the company where she’s
worked for over eleven years as an interface designer
and system developer. She’s an independent, creative
thinker with a witty sense of humor who dislikes stuffy,
aloof, and arrogant people. Although Barbara has had
occasional philosophical differences with her colleagues,
she’s been able to produce award-winning software
packages, which helps keep her motivated.
Although Barbara
generally enjoys her job, her greatest challenge is
a boss who doesn't manage his time and projects well.
She's thinking about going back for a management degree
so she can advance in the company, but her ultimate
goal is to start her own software interface design business.
The persona method
is especially useful if your project entails developing
offerings for mass consumption — where there is
no specific client or customer to please. It can also,
however, work extremely well when you’re working
with a client, to help pinpoint specific kinds of concerns
and options that would not have been readily apparent.
If your goal entails
developing an online software tutorial, for example,
you might conclude that one typical learner is a teacher
with limited exposure to the subject. In contrast, another
typical learner might be a software engineer who needs
exposure only to certain topics. The solution you design
will need to satisfy each persona’s preferred way
of using the tutorial, without complicating life for
the others. A related idea: You can build case
studies around each persona to illustrate your material.
Step 3: Write
a Mission Statement for Your Offering
 A
mission statement for your product, service, or solution
defines why it should exist. Different from a business
or company mission statement, it focuses on the specific
purpose of your offering. My original product mission
statement reads something like this:
“To provide
a set of potent, easy-to-understand techniques to guide
business owners, managers, and independent professionals
to boost productivity, enhance customer and client loyalty,
and increase bottom line results, in the areas of:
- Running highly effective, compelling meetings
- Removing obstacles to productivity
- Assessing and managing project risks
- Boosting product and service value”
In conclusion,
developing your offerings need not occur in a vacuum.
By identifying and interviewing your audiences, and
then creating a mission statement, you've completed
three of seven key steps that will be continued in Part
2.
Copyright 2006 Adele Sommers
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