Note: Click here for an overview of the Clarify Your Marketing Message video series.
Hi, I’m Sam Nelson, owner of Website Muscle.
Again, one of the biggest opportunities that I see for small businesses to grow is to Clarify Your Marketing Message. The first step in our 7 Steps to Clarify Your Marketing Message is to identify your customer, which we do with two simple categories.
1. Demographics
We usually start with a typical marketing buyer persona. You need to identify exactly who your customer is. Their gender, their age, where they live, what their job is, etc.
We really want to narrow down who your customer is because this is your marketing message will be designed to speak to that specific individual. If you don’t have a customer in mind, it’s virtually impossible to create a compelling and concise marketing message.
2. Goals and Objectives
The second thing we want to identify is the customer’s business goals and objectives.
Imagine your customer traveling down life’s highway. Where is it taking them? What do they want? Where does their business fit in?
In the context of your marketing message, the customer is headed down the road and encounters a problem. Your business is there to help them solve that problem and get to where they’re going.
Identifying Our Customers
To use our company as an example, we have two main customers.
One customer is a business owner. Since we build business websites, some business owners like to engage with us directly. But we often work with marketing managers as well, depending on the size of the company and their marketing budget.
Although you would expect them to be aligned, a marketing manager’s goals and objectives might be different than a business owner’s. Business owners are usually revenue-driven. They want a website that helps them grow the company, drive leads, etc.
But a marketing manager might approach a website project with different goals. Namely, to check whatever boxes their higher-ups put in place for a new website project.
In our marketing message, we want to address these two audience segments differently. Separating owners from marketing managers in our messaging sets us up to succeed in Step 2 — Identify the Problem.
Watch the rest of the Clarify Your Marketing Message Series:
- Overview
- 1. Identify Your Customer
- 2. Address the Problem
- 3. Introduce Yourself
- 4. Share Your Process
- 5. Determine Your CTAs
- 6. Failure
- 7. Success!
