Show notes
Are you invisible to your target market? Do they even know you're alive? This goes back to the idea of money versus time. Because one of the advantages of social media is that if you have more time than you have money, you can spend more time posting and contacting people directly on social media.
If you have more money than you have time, then you can run ads and you can get your ads in front of people without having to sit in front of the computer all day. So there are definitely different ways to accomplish this.
If you want to become visible though, you have to have one or the other. You have to have time or money. You can't be out of both.
Well, I have no money and I have no time to do this. Well, at that point, you're out of business.
David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, cohost Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the topic of, Are You Invisible to Your Target Market? Welcome back, Jay.
Jay: Thank you so much, David. This one is tough for me because when you know you have a product that people want, you just know it. And you know if they could just learn about you, that you would be able to sell this product and you just know they don't see you. It's a frustration. It really is.
David: Yeah, we've talked about this topic before. I've talked about this topic in live presentations and probably in previous podcasts, and one of the reasons that I keep coming back to it is that it really resonates with a lot of people in business, a lot of sales people, a lot of business owners, because it is so important.
The idea of being visible or invisible to your target market is going to directly impact your ability to make things happen. And what I find kind of fun about this topic, to the extent that it can be fun, is that a lot of times in the movies or in television, invisibility is generally viewed as a big advantage.
It's an asset, you know, Ooh, wouldn't it be cool if I'm Harry Potter and I've got my invisibility cloak, and I can do all sorts of things that are cool and fun. But in business invisibility is just deadly. Because, as you indicated, if the people who could benefit from what you're offering don't see you, don't hear you, don't know you're there, don't know you are alive, then you have absolutely zero possibility of selling to them.
So in evaluating that question for yourself, are you invisible to your target market? It's probably a good idea to really think it through, and don't assume that you are more visible than you might actually be.
Jay: Yeah, we know about assumptions, right? But I think this is also important because a lot of people will only focus on advertising that gets them leads or some type of returns.
There's a whole nother level of advertising where it's just brand awareness. You're probably not going to generate clicks, but if you can be one of the options in their mind, you know, if you're a plumber and you're not necessarily getting a lead every time you send out a postcard or something, but when that toilet finally goes down, if you're one of the three that they think about, then you're so much closer. And so that's a part of advertising that I think a lot of people miss.
David: Yeah, I completely agree. I think another problem that people run into sometimes with this is that they're trying to be everywhere at all times with everyone. And unless you have an unlimited budget, that just doesn't work. So you can get in front of a whole lot of people who have absolutely no capacity to buy from you.
I've worked with businesses in the past that were running radio ads and they were business to business businesses. And they're running on music stations, and I'm like, okay, well, it's possible that there are some business owners or some people who could buy from you who are listening to that station, but the majority of people listening to that ad don't own businesses.
They can't use what it is that you're selling. So you're paying 100% of the purchase price of an ad on that radio station, but maybe only one to 2% of that audience is someone who could benefit from what you're doing. So in that case, they have the opposite problem. They're visible to lots of people, very few of whom can actually purchase.
So recognizing that we need to be visible primarily to the people who have the ability to spend money with us is going to be key.
Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And that takes research and time and tracking. But you work a lot with promotional products, and I used to think, what good is somebody giving out pens or mouse pads or things like that.
This is one of those things, you've been holding that pen and using it for weeks and it's got somebody's name on it. I didn't need 'em before, and now suddenly I do. And here's this pen or this mousepad that I've been using, and the phone number's right there. So it's kind of like a preemptive strike.
You're trying to be in their mind at the right time when they actually need you.
David: Yeah, and when is the right time? It's whenever they're ready for it. So when you have something like that that is in front of people on an ongoing basis, the likelihood of getting that result is better. If you're running a radio ad or a TV ad, you see it for 30 seconds and then it goes away.
Or you hear it for 30 seconds and then it goes away. So things like promotional products can be very effective like that. Especially because it's also extremely targeted. You can send those out physically, just to the people that you want to reach and impact. So you're not going to have the waste that's associated with a lot of other media.
So, just sort of circling back, for those who know they need to be more visible to their target market and aren't. You know, one of the first things that I would suggest is to evaluate who exactly is my target market? Who are the people that I need to reach? Where are they located? What companies do they work in?
Or if it's b2c, who are they? What neighborhoods do they live in? And are there ways that I can reach them so that I can start to become visible? And then create that level of awareness they're going to need. I refer to that as entry level awareness. In other words, they don't know you too well yet.
They recognize that you're alive. They recognize that you're taking in air on the planet, but they don't love you. They don't hate you. They're just aware that you exist. That sort of entry level awareness, and it's a start, but that's not where the sales happen. So we have to sort of move through these different levels.
We go from entry level awareness to comfort level. I get to the point where I've seen you enough, or I've seen your information, or I've seen your ads, or maybe I've met you at a networking function or two, and now I'm comfortable enough with you that I'm willing to place that first time order. And so it's moving people through these different layers.
Starting out with moving from invisible to visible and then moving through the layers that's going to ultimately generate the sales.
Jay: Yeah. I love the concept of entry level and we've heard the statistic, I don't know what it is now, but that a customer has to see you or see your brand, you know, three, seven, whatever times...
David: Right.
Jay: Before they get to that comfort level.
David: Right.
Jay: And that can be done in a lot of ways. We talk about social media a lot in this podcast, but the beauty of social media is that you can do a lot of things that do not cost a lot of money. But you can get in front of people. And if you can do things that people will share that can be worth a lot of money. Especially for that entry level awareness that you're talking about.
David: Yeah, and sort of going back to what we talked about in our last podcast, what does it cost to acquire a customer? This goes back to the idea of money versus time. Because one of the advantages of social media is that if you have more time than you have money, you can spend more time posting and contacting people directly on social media.
If you have more money than you have time, then you can run ads and you can get your ads in front of people without having to sit in front of the computer all day. So there are definitely different ways to accomplish this.
If you want to become visible though, you have to have one or the other. You have to have time or money. You can't be out of both.
Well, I have no money and I have no time to do this. Well, at that point, you're out of business. And it's really kind of sad. But there are business owners and salespeople that I've talked to who kind of say that, well, I don't have time to do that, and I don't have money to do the ads.
It's like, well, what are you doing all day? Because if the work that you're doing during the day is not producing revenue that you could then use to acquire new customers, you've got to change those activities. Or if you're spending time doing things that are not generating the customers to begin with, you need to change the activities that you're engaged in in order to be able to get customers from it.
So lots of different aspects to that, but starting out with the understanding of, okay, who exactly is my target market? Where are they? What percentage are you reaching now of the people that you could and should be reaching in your market? How many of them actually know you're alive?
There's a definitive answer to that. You might not know the exact answer, but you'll have a reasonably good idea.
Jay: Yeah. And I also like the idea, for entry level awareness. If you have a system that encourages people to give referrals, I don't think that there's a better source for entry level. You know, somebody's at home and they're talking to their friend and they're like, "I've got a problem with my car." And their friend says, oh, I use so and so mechanic down the street all the time.