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Who is Your Audience?

In this section, we're going to be talking about who is your audience okay and focusing in on that now I imagine when I say who is your audience? Some of you are like well, wait a second joey, I'm not a rock band I'm not a stage actor I'm not a performer, I have customers, not an audience and some of you might say, well, joey, I'm actually a professional services business provider I don't have something as lowly as customers I have kalai ints and some of you might even say, well, I actually have patience on dh that's who I serve and deal with and for those of you that are in the either computer business or the drug dealing business you say you have users which I've always thought it's fascinating that drug dealers and computer companies refer to their clients as the same type of thing as users I like to refer to them as audience members and some of you may be thinking, well, joey that's kind of ah semantics conversation it's a little nuance, but I actually think it's a pretty important...

one and here's why I've had the pleasure throughout my life of singing with a number of different groups and having the chance to be on stage on and done some acting and it's a really good time and the experience you have when you're on stage some of you it to be frank causes you to get a little tense and a little nervous, and you're like, oh no, not the mike on me, really? No, I really don't want to be in front of everyone in the spotlight, but as business owners that's really what we are right, our businesses were trying to shine the spotlight on our business. We're trying to get everyone in our audience to tune out the rest of the world, to dim the lights, to silence their cell phones and focus on us. And I think if we use this analogy even audience, it helps us remember that a little bit more right now throughout today's presentation in tomorrow and wednesday, I may say customers and that's just because most of you actually thinking that his customers but any time you hear me say customers, you hear me say audience or clients or patients or users it's all the same thing, and when we think about our audience, I think it's useful tio tella very quick story about an opportunity I had when I was in college. Um the group I sang with the notre dame glee club, we went on tour to europe and was very exciting and I was nineteen years old and this was my first time to europe when we were going to travel all over europe singing these wonderful concerts and we showed up in rome for our first concert and I mean rome for those of you have been absolutely gorgeous city it's magical and we got to the cathedral where we were going to be performing and there's sixty guys in the group and we're all in our tuxedos and we're all spit and polished up and I like to think looking good and we're ready to go on waiting in the back room when we look out and there are seven people in the audience seven I mean this is a gigantic cathedral in rome those of you that have been rome they don't build small churches in rome they build cathedrals basilicas huge gorgeous, ornate palaces is and to be frank I mean, not as a commentary on religion where the notre dame glee club I mean this is a catholic institution in the hotbed of catholicism's in the world right rome and it was a little disappointing house like we've come all the way to europe we're here in this beautiful venue and we're singing for seven people now to stack it even worse um I was a no casing already sing first tenor which for those of you that are familiar with vocal progressions and how that works it's the little guys that sing like mickey mouse right it's the high pitched voice you know, the highest notes the male chorus and there was this version of the ave maria that we do that had a solo at the end and right is we were getting ready to get to the venue the conductor came over to me and he's like joey, you're going to do the solo this's amazing! Oh my god, I'm on tour in europe! Yes, you know, I'm singing the solo on this is going to be amazing and then I'm sitting there backstage I look out and there's seven people and I'm thinking for my solo debut seven people, this the sox, this is it, and one of my colleagues in the group got us all together before the concert started and he said, you know, guys, I know you've all heard by now it's it's a pretty thin audience it's, our first stop on tour it's understandable of some of you are feeling disheartened or dejected, he said, but the important things to remember about our audience is for the typical audience member at one of our concerts, this is the only time in their lives they will hear the notre dame glee club sink. We're in europe, you know, we only come here once every three years it's a very rare occasion, and when we do you know what people have things on their schedule, they might not be able to be here, so this is your chance this is your chance to perform for our audience in a way that they'll remember for the rest of their lives. I suddenly had a different perspective about those seven people I started to care about them. I start to empathize with them. I started to think, you know what? There may only be seven. This may not be a stadium full of screaming fans throwing their clothes at the stage. This is the notary in glee club it's a completely different audience, right? But this is my responsibility. That's. Why I think this is important that's, why I want you to start thinking of your customers as audience members. Your job is to perform your job is to give them a show unlike any show they've ever seen. Your job is to connect with them at a level that leaves them saying, wow, that was an amazing performance stop and think how different your business would be if you thought of it is a performance instead of a transaction instead of give me your money, let me give you this product, let me, you know, provide this service and instead we thought of it is I'm on stage, I'm in the spotlight, I want to hit my cues, I want to know my lines, I want to connect with them at an emotional level. I want to change the way they think I want to change the way they feel I want to change the way they act, my change, our perspective so in this whole area of audience right, I wanted to start off by getting to know a little bit more about our audience and you know, there's that a jewel you know? Survey says type theory I wanted to kind of survey our audience and so if we can this is for the folks online is, well, tio chime in on the chat rooms let's try to get a tally for if you're in the first year of your business, a show of hands okay, so if you're online trymon show of hands, so in the studio audience about twenty percent of the people are in the first year of their business that's me doing math on the fly with five people kind of crazy, right? They're ending up being a lot more math in this presentation than I ever thought is a guy who specialized in holding up the other ninety percent of the class on the g p a when it came to math class it's a little ironic that I'm talking so much about math in terms of online do we have a bunch of people charming in that they're in year one of their business? Yeah, we've got people who are just timing in now and they there are a few who are in the first year. I love it awesome. And so how about in years? Two through five? So you kind of been doing it for a while, you know, you've worked out some of the king, so in our audience, about forty percent, my gut instinct is it's, kind of a similar group online more than five years, you know, again, about forty percent of our studio audience let me get a little more personal in terms of this survey, how many of you got into business? Because you wanted to serve a certain customer? You wanted to do something toe, like people opportune, make their lives easier, provide for them show of hands in the studio, it is one hundred percent of the studio audience, and my gut instinct is that online it's a it's a similar percentage. I also think most people, when they're first starting their business, that's, why they get into it, that's, why they do it, you know, they want this connection, they want to be of service and be of offering how many of you and I'm going to put a studio audience a little bit on the spot still feel every day, one hundred percent, I'm serving my audience, and I'm connecting with them in a new and amazing away and this is why I got into business yeah, no hands are going up, okay? And I presume no hands are going up online either. That's not a criticism of any of you folks let's be clear, the people in the room, very successful business owners that air, you know, have done even the ones they're here kind of in their first, second, third year, they've had other successful careers and businesses that they've done. So we've got people that air are talented and are really committed to their businesses. Yet the connection just isn't there anymore. So that's, what we're going to be talking about in this segment like, how do we get that connection with our audience? How do we build it out? How do we make that happen? I think you two pretend for a moment that you are the ceo of a little company called starbucks, okay? And as ceo of starbucks or if you rather pretend that you're the head of marketing for sha're bucks, your job is to get a cz many people around the planet to drink hot, caffeinated liquid that's your job. Okay, whether it's, grundy, air, venti or whatever new name they come up with, you know that's what you want them to dio who is your target audience? Who are you trying to get this who's your best? Customer last the people in the studio audience or someone's online and they want to reply we can shout it out who are we kind of going after and we can pick up a mic and jump in there's no right answers just thoughts, feelings, impressions bob, I'll call it c I'll call on folks if you won't volunteer yourself, we'll play with bob for question number one ok bub, ceo of starbucks who's your audience who were you trying to get to buy this liquid? Who do you think your best customer, caffeinated addiction individuals, caffeinated, addicted individuals? I like that in terms of what demographic, what are we kind of looking at? Rusty, we have somebody online we have someone would like to steal from mom. Okay, excellent. We have three eighteen media who says soccer, mom's, coffee snobs and entrepreneurs and then we have a poly mathis who says tired, grumpy commuters tired, grumpy commuters I like the tired, grumpy commuters business people, people that are not excited about their lives, right? They have to wear these suits all day, right? They don't get to walk around in colorful tennis shoes, so basically p professionals, you know, adult grown ups people that are addicted to caffeine, all right, let's pretend that you're the ceo or the chief marketing officer of mountain dew your job is to get people to drink as much cold caffeinated liquid is possible liquid that kind of looks a little bit like anna freeze and will pretty much destroy your stomach, but man, is it tasty and it gets you going some of the people in the break we asked me there, like joey, where you mainlining mountain do before the presentation, we've tried to calm it down a little bit. All pride get ramped up is the segment goes on, but let's pretend you're the head of marketing or this ceo for mountain dew who's your target audience who are you going after? Who are you trying to go with let's? Call on sri sri tell us, who's who's your target audience? Well, I'm going to say because I was their target audience teenagers probably calling agent scott students young people crazy people who haven't quite learned that the things you put in your mouth have an effect on your body, right? It's that joyous time when we're young and you're like, I will order a large pizza every night at eleven o'clock for a snack and eat it myself, right? Because there's no consequence who when you're a teenager even when you're nearly twenties as life progresses, the consequences increase for those health and food choices, but teenagers right teenagers are the big target market for mountain deal let's pretend you're the ceo or the chief marketing officer of a little company called ensure now I know let me be clear no one in the studio audience and probably no one watching online is in the target market foreign sure, but who drinks ensure megan can you pick up tell us tell us who is the target market for insure my dear sweet grandmother your dear sweet grandmother exactly the more seasoned in our population right the elderly this is the target market for ensure okay one last example let's pretend you're the ceo or the chief marketing officer of a little company called kool aid your job is to get people all hopped up on sugar water okay that's nice and colored and comes in a variety of different flavors and colors for your enjoyment who is your target market? Who are you trying to get to buy kool aid go from online charming insane young active kids kids small children's small children the little people amongst us right this is the target market for kool aid but I have to ask is it really that simple? Can it really be boiled down to well, this is our target market this is who we go after I would argue that that's a gross over simplification of things all right let's pretend we take starbucks and we combine it as with teenagers which is often the case we get something like this now what I love about this picture is it's really kind of thie the quintessential picture of american youth all right? We're going to act more grown up than we actually are we're going to drink our starbucks and as a real sign of defiance we're going to smoke cigarettes because that's what grownups do all right let's pretend we take kool aid and we combine it with teenagers or people in their early twenties now I don't know how many of you spent time at parties in high school or maybe in college or just like hanging out with the younger crowd but they're using kool aid in unique and different ways that the ceo and chief marketing officer of kool aid probably aren't spending a lot of time thinking about our marketing too finally god forbid what would happen if starbucks collided with children? Well what we would learn is and let me be really clear this is not my son, okay? This is not my child if you ever want to have a good time and you're just having kind of a bad day and want to feel a little bit better about your standing in life google, starbucks and kids and you will find thousands of photos like this I make no judgment on their parenting except for the fact that they should stop doing what they're doing it's not as simple as we think I have the pleasure of living in a part of the country in colorado where we have unique things happen with animals sometimes and we might have an animal like this and antelope which is native to colorado and a jackrabbit which you can also find in colorado and sometimes they get together they you know, start a friendship or relationship and we end up with the infamous jackalope okay? And so for the jackalope what I'd like you to do is parent share so to set this up we're going to take literally thirty seconds okay it's going to feel like a little dead time but it's not it's thirty seconds I want you to pair up with the person next to you for those of you that are online, this is a time for youto open the chat window and type in on what I want you to describe is who is your audience? Who is your target market that you're going after? We're going to do a bunch of shares on this we're going to shares from the live audience we're going to do shares from online so type in and share who is your target audience you guys share amongst yourselves who's your target audience I'm gonna grab a very quick drink and come back and start taking answers lacey wallace just wants to confirm that you actually just said the jackalope do exist I didn't just say jackal of six folks, if you saw it on the internet, it's really? I'm just telling you it's really right? So type those in. Tell us your answers. All right? We said we don't take about thirty seconds. Guess what? That's it all right, we're coming back. Look how fast that was. Some people were like, what was still trying to decide who my audience was. Let's. Go ahead and we'll start with the people that are in the studio audience, and then we'll move to some of the online pope folks. Sherry, can I ask you to start and tell us who is your target audience? Well, it really varies, but to simplify it, just young businesses starting out, okay, that's, young businesses starting out with the caveat that there kind of other elements of it, but if we really boiled it down that's what it is, young businesses starting out. Okay, can you tell us a little bit more about those young businesses that air starting out a little more about that audience? Um, I'd say, like people just getting into the business realm, ages thirty to fifty. Probably. It really varies, though, because it's a creative industry. So I really haven't narrowed down on my target audience yet got your awesome and it's why I'm thrilled that you're in the room because we're going to be talking a lot in this segment about how do we keep narrowing it down because contrary to popular belief, the more narrow you make it, the more successful your businesses okay? I want to pause because this is a little bit of a mind scrambler when we first started business, we think, oh, I will take anybody that comes to the door I need to put food on the table, I need to pay rent oh, I run a graphic design business, you won't need to create videos sure that's kind of creative I'm happy to do that. Oh, wait, you're decorating your house in the hamptons and you need help picking a rug sure, I'm kind of creative I can help with that await your daughter's getting married and she needs an invitation sure, I can help with that, and we started getting these really diverse offerings. I don't know if any of you ever woken up in your business and kind of said if I look back over my portfolio of things I've done, there is no string tying this altogether it's a really common experience, especially when you're first starting right, so what we want to do is focus on narrowing in the audience that we're serving and getting really clear who they are let's pick another one from the from the studio audience john, why don't you tell us? I know you've got a variety of customer types but described one the best you can women between the ages of thirty five and fifty five who wanting to lose weight fast women between the ages of thirty five and fifty five who wanna lose weight fast so a much more targeted audience that he's going after right? Are there more things that you know about that particular audience member? Yes, they've usually had a couple of kids they've often in a failing relationship they're unhappy they're low self esteem that didn't feel good about their bodies and they want to get out of their situation and change themselves. Wow john thank you for sharing. Yeah, exactly thie infamous mike dropped right exactly were good. I love it because what that example that john she's gave offices look how specific he got my gut instinct is as he was describing this customer base or this audience member you started thinking of people you know that are like that he said women thirty five to fifty and you started going okay, I know a couple of those who want to lose weight and want to lose it quickly okay? I'm sorry. You know a couple of those who've maybe had a couple of kids and are in a failing relationship and aren't feeling good about themselves and one action now and as he's describing the lenses coming in tighter and tighter and the image of who that person is is getting clearer and clearer and the funny thing is if I were to ask you and I'm not going to put anybody on the spot so you don't have to call out friends and family members and associates, you thought of someone while john was doing that, you thought of a specific person that you know, when your network that could benefit from that now if you knew john and you trust you, john, and you felt like his product and his services worked there's a direct connection for a referral and introduction, passing someone off why? Because he was so specific, and again, this is counterintuitive to the way we think, right? We're thinking, and this isn't me picking on you. Sherry was a perfect setup who says if it was plans just for the for the audience, right? If we say, well, it's kind of all kinds of busy people that aaron business, what we hear is what want want want want and we see this map of the world and all the possible people it could be, and the person finishes telling us what they do or what they're offering is we're like, oh, that's interesting, oh yeah, if I think of anyone, I'll let you know compare that to john's description where it's like oh, we're getting really specific without even having to ask you you're starting to think of people that fall into that category it's natural it's human it's how our brains work we have some folks online who shared well I have a kind of question that perfect I know that we hear a lot you take coffee for example can't everyone want coffee? I mean isn't isn't uh if you are starting out of business because you have a product that you feel like has a lot of value to everyone don't you want to offer it to everyone? Yeah it's a great question and remember back to segment one where we talked about the customer life cycle where our goal is to drive them across toe advocacy everyone is not going to be an advocate. Your key target market is going to be the advocate let's use john's example, the thirty five to fifty year old woman who wants to lose weight wants to lose it quickly has had a few kids is in a failing relationship isn't happy about where she is in life knows other women like that she hangs out with them to get together for lunch one so we can complain about their husbands the hey this is coffee for everyone how often do you sit in a conversation and say so if you had some coffee today it really doesn't happen sometimes that happens on a monday morning like today early in the morning where people are like how much coffee have you had right? But as a general rule we don't have those type of conversations so what I would encourage you to do especially those of you that are just starting out in business get really narrow, get really focused and find a few zealous advocates find a few people that are so excited about your product so excited about your service and your offering that they become champions right out of the blocks and they become advocates then we see this at starbucks right? Let's let's you know, pull back the veil and be honest about it when you walk into a starbucks is the only people you see business people in suits that look like they're miserable leading quiet lives of desperation no, you see some of those but there are also little kids their soccer moms they're random teenagers there are college students sitting there using the free wifi there's all these different people when your business expands, you can bring mohr types of personas and more types of customers in, but when you're just starting out do yourself a favor focus in because it will do a couple of things number one allow you create a stronger connection with them number two would allow you to build a more solid first hundred days experience that tracks to their emotions because everybody's having I mean without being critical women age thirty five to fifty there's some stuff going on their bio chemically and physically that is going to make I mean that's a tough market to be in I mean there's there's a lot of emotion and a lot of chemistry that's affecting the impact and so the difference between if you grabbed all your customers that are, say thirty five and thirty six s and compared them to all your customers that air forty nine and fifty while they both fit within that range there's some pretty big differences there right so the more narrow it can be the more focused it isthe okay any others from online? Are we good? We have so many ways. You sure? So steve place says male engineers aged forty five and older who want to retire soon eighth race nine enterprises with one thousand plus employees that need to communicate internally with their employees if I can pause on that what was the name of that person each right? Nine h right nine okay, so what I love about it is you just you know you're like oh businesses with more than one thousand employees that need to communicate internally I say this respectfully I'm not picking on you is that that specific you pretty much have described every business that has more than a thousand employees is a customer of yours now, from a monetary point of view, I can understand you say yes, I want them all bring them all into me but how would that change if you said businesses with more than one thousand employees on the east coast of the united states who have recently experienced an explosion in the number of employees they have and are trying to communicate with them and more effective ways when some of the people that used to be in the business no one understand the business, but they've got a lot of new hires that don't and they're trying to figure out a way other than email that they can actually connect with these people and get them to be part of the culture buying into the mission the ethic, the spirit of the business different approach, right? My gut instinct is if you describe it that way suddenly again, we were talking earlier and you just narrowed the field. Now I'm thinking of big, fast growing companies on the east coast that have more than a thousand employees I'm quicker to come up with a name for you then we just like the big ones come to think about okay, so the moral of the story is when we look at our audience, the more specific weaken me the better, okay, the more detailed weaken dive in the better it's going to serve our business