Tag: audience growth

4 Ways to Stop Attracting People Who Can’t Afford Your Services

There’s nothing worse for an entrepreneur than putting all your efforts into building a service, and a marketing strategy, only to continuously attract people who say they can’t afford them. 

While many business owners focus their attention on making sure they have built an apparent “fool-proof” plan to bring people in, they can still stumble into an audience that isn’t right for them. This can be frustrating because people don’t understand why, even though they are good at what they do, prospects aren’t buying or, worse yet, they are asking for discounts on everything.

The good news is that there is a way to stop attracting those who can’t afford your services and shift your attention and marketing efforts to bring in people who are ready to buy. It all boils down to having and implementing a brand strategy that deeply resonates with your target audience and allows you to show up authentically every single time.

1. Get clear on who you do want to attract

For your business to be successful and start attracting the right people, you need to begin by understanding who your ideal customers are at a granular level. The more effective you are at connecting with the right audience and speaking to their problems and needs, the more sales you will make. 

Getting extremely clear on who your ideal customers are requires going beyond demographics to truly understand the psychological and emotional elements that are impacting their lives, which will, in turn, determine their purchasing decisions. 

The more you understand your audience, the more effective your messaging will be because you will have the capacity to speak directly to them, and they will finally feel seen and heard. Pricing becomes less important when they see you as the best solution to the specific problem or need that they have. 

For example, it’s not nearly as impactful or effective to say that you are selling a program for women who want to lose weight, which is hugely generalized, than to say that you help busy women over 40 who are frustrated after trying low-carb, high-fat fad diets without lasting results lose weight.  Not only is the latter version a lot more detailed, but it also speaks to a very specific pain point which means that these women will feel an immediate sense of recognition and understanding.

2. Stop undercharging for your services

Many entrepreneurs undercharge for their services because they believe they need to build a robust reputation or have a large audience before they can charge premium prices. 

However, in practice, lowering your prices may end up hurting your reputation in the first place. If you’re building an audience based on people who are looking for a cheaper solution then it will be very difficult for you to make sales once you raise your prices.

If you want to start attracting clients who can afford your services as an online coach or consultant, you need to start charging the right price instead. Trying to sell a service by being the cheapest option out there is going to be a race straight to the bottom. After all, there will always be someone with a lower price in the market.

Instead, you want to set your price based on the value you deliver. To make this calculation, first determine what the outcome of the results you help to generate is worth. 

3. Position yourself as an authority

Attracting the right people also comes down to being able to effectively position yourself as an authority or leader in your field by creating a powerful brand strategy that will allow you to be intentional with your marketing.

Building an effective brand strategy requires having absolute clarity around who you are, what you stand for and the complete experience that comes from being in contact with your business.

It is fundamental to have a well-defined brand message that clearly communicates your value by showcasing the actual outcome that you help your clients achieve. What you have to ask yourself as a business owner is “what am I really selling?” because I can assure you that it is much more than the service you are giving them. It is truly about the transformation, the outcome and the results they are getting because of hiring you. 

Focus your brand communication on them and not on you. Many service providers make the mistake of simply saying things like “I am a web designer” or “I am a fitness coach” as a way to explain to others the kind of service that they provide. When doing this, they are focusing on themselves instead of on the needs of their audience.

Instead, you want to change your messaging to reflect the result you help others achieve. For example, saying things like “I build websites that increase conversions” or “I help women lose those stubborn 10 lbs” is more specific to the outcomes you deliver.

4. True brand differentiation

While it is true that it seems like market saturation is at its peak, in reality,  this is only an illusion. 

The real problem isn’t that there are too many providers and competitors in an industry, it’s that most entrepreneurs don’t know how to effectively differentiate themselves from others.

To attract the right audience, it’s vital that you position your offer as the best solution and ideal vehicle prospects need to achieve success.  One of the best ways to do this is by creating a framework, methodology, or process that is unique to your business, a signature system that distinguishes you and sets you apart from the rest. 

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On top of this, according to the theory proposed by George A. Akerlof, winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and Rachel E. Kranton, professor of Economics at Duke University, in their Identity Economics book, people make economic decisions based not just on financial incentives, but also on their identity.

This matters to you as an entrepreneur because if you want to attract the right people, you need to effectively differentiate yourself from others while standing for something in the process. Today’s consumers are making more and more decisions based on their identities and how others’ identities shape their own. What this means is that when faced with many different options, we tend to choose the one that reinforces our beliefs the most.

If you, as a brand, aren’t doing an excellent job at clearly and succinctly communicating who you are, then you are making it way too difficult for the right people to choose you.

Putting the pieces together

Ultimately, attracting the right people comes down to making sure you are being highly intentional with your message and the way this message comes across. This allows you to transform your audience’s perception of you while bringing in the right people into your business. Taking the time to craft your complete brand strategy will allow you to get more effective results with your marketing plan as well. 

Fabi Paolini Entrepreneur Leadership Network Writer

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Skillopedia – Skills for the real world

How To Attract The Right People For Personal Development & Growth | Soft Skills & Self Improvement Training | Skillopedia #softskills#selfimprovement#personalitydevelopment Researchers and personality analysts say that your personality is a combination of people you interact and spend most of the time with. Yes, it’s true. It’s imperative to surround yourself with the right people for your own self-improvement and personal growth. Now, that might make you wonder how should I attract the right people in my social and professional network? Where do I find them? Some people perfectly do that, they have the right people in their life who motivate and inspire them from time to time. This self improvement and soft skills training video would help you exactly achieve that goal. Learn the steps to invite, not good, but the right people into your life for your own personality development. You are watching this video on Skillopedia, part of Let’s Talk Institute for Personality Development and self improvement. We have hundreds of videos to develop good communication skills, interpersonal skills, personal growth, motivation skills, inspirational tips to develop self-confidence. A complete soft skills training catalogue to help you stay ahead in this competitive world. Skillopedia is a well known name in the corporate training segment in Mumbai to deliver best personality development courses for corporate employees and individuals. To watch such interesting videos and read the complete transcript of this video, visit – http://www.learnex.in/ ============================================= Our Social Media – 👉Facebook – @skillopediaone http://www.facebook.com/skillopediaone 👉Instagram – @letstalkpodcast http://www.instagram.com/letstalkpodcast 👉Follow us on Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/letstalkone ============================================= Our other Channels you would ❤️ 👉Learn English as a secondary language http://www.youtube.com/letstalk 👉Learn English through Hindi – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtAr… 👉Learn a new English word daily – http://www.youtube.com/letstalkpodcast Some other Skillopedia sessions you might have missed :- 👉Public Speaking Tips To Overcome Stage Fear https://youtu.be/4-R1EHKmano 👉 How to AWKWARD SILENCE in a conversation? https://youtu.be/CDflqsRwUis 👉What to do when people Shout or Yell at you? https://youtu.be/cR_fjOtNqNo 👉8 Morning Habits To Kick-Start everyday. https://youtu.be/BQQ3I6ztO-A 👉The art of saying – I don’t give a DAMN! https://youtu.be/Hwkavu-F9r0 👉Communication Skills Training – How To Avoid Awkward Silence? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDflq… 👉How To React When People Shout At You? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR_fj… 👉6 Phrases That May Sound Rude. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv48j… 👉Start A Conversation ANYWHERE, ANYTIME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPxaU… 👉How to be a SMART MOUTH? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fXja… 👉How to attract people like a magnet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYxn9… 👉How to sound more confident when you are not? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJtcV… 👉Why People Misunderstand You? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcW9f..

How B2B Brands Can Identify Their Target Audience

How well do you know your brand’s target audience?

Or, how well do you think you know your target audience?

We find that many brand managers in Europe assume they know their audience very well indeed. They might even have a very clear image in their head of the type of individual they are trying to target with all of their advertising and marketing strategies. 

What is often the case, however, is this image in their heads isn’t always completely correct. When it comes to targeting your audience in Europe and motivating them into making a purchase, you need to ensure that your understanding of this group is bang on. Any slight differences between what’s in your head and your audience could result in some of your targeted work falling flat.

If you know that you have this problem in your business currently, here are steps to take to understand your target audience better. If you follow them through, you’ll know how to discover your target audience and start fine-tuning your aim for them in all your campaigns.

Brainstorm your target audience.

The first thing you should do is sit down and brainstorm what you already know about your target audience. Think about the characteristics that all of the individuals who are most likely to buy your products will share. Are they in the same age group? What is their job title; what kind of salary do they earn? You should also look at the common challenges, needs, and objections that this group of people might face in their life.

One great tip is to take a look at the audience that your competitors are targeting. How does that group differentiate from yours? Examine the data-driven insights using the right tools to understand the entire funnel, and how you can leverage this data to incorporate your USP to retarget.

Take advantage of brand trackers.

Use a brand tracker to get measurable and actionable data on your audience. This data can give you various, but specific insights. For instance, tracking brand awareness will tell whether or not your ideal target audience actually knows about you. As well as that, tracking brand consideration will show if they would consider using your brand. You can also track this data for your competitors and compare how your brand fares against them. 

In addition, you might even discover that this isn’t actually the best audience for you to be targeting. By digging deep into all of this brand tracking data, you might see new audiences appear that you had never previously considered. Just make sure to choose a brand tracker that caters to niche audiences.

Develop a persona for your target audience.

Now it’s worth creating a persona of what the quintessential member of your target audience is like. There are so many benefits from audience personas, so why not use it?

For example, if you target the millennial generation, go beyond a generic idea of a millennial and think more closely about who you are selling to. If you find that millennial females who live in urban areas and work in the tech sector buy your product more than anyone else, then their defining features and characteristics should also be those of your audience persona. 

Once you have made a persona, it’s important that you inform everyone on your team. To keep everyone on the same track with all their strategic work, you all need to be targeting the same persona.

Start targeting.

Now that you know who you are aiming at, it’s time to start trying to reach them. In order to target your audience, focus your efforts on the channels they use most often. 

If you know that your target audience spends a lot of their online time using Twitter, then it’s worth starting a campaign on that social media platform. However, if you are targeting an older audience who might prefer to spend their evenings in front of their TVs than tweeting, think about running some TV adverts.

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Researching the channels that your audience use really can help you immensely — not doing so could end with you shooting blindly and completely missing. 

How does running marketing campaigns help find your target audience, you may ask. Well, how can you be positive that they are the audience for you unless you see if they work? And don’t forget…

Continue to monitor.

So you research your target audience well and then start to target them using suitable methods and channels. Job done, right? Not quite.

Sure, you’ve taken the right kind of steps so that the right kind of consumers will see your brand marketing. But how do you know whether that’s really happening once your adverts and promotions are out there in the wild? How do you know that they are helping your sales?

Keep your eye on the ball and monitor how your marketing efforts are doing. You can do this by tracking your brand guidelines and campaigns to make sure that they are hitting the spot. 

It’s also worth noting that target audiences can change or shift over time, so monitoring them is a continuous task for every brand manager. As long as you do make monitoring a habit of a lifetime, then there’s no risk of you ever being left behind by competitors. 

Those steps don’t sound too difficult, right? If you follow through with them, you should discover new things about your target audience that you might never have realized. And those nuggets of wisdom could help you polish up your marketing campaigns like never before. 

Not only that, but you can now carry out all of your campaigns confidently, as your target audience shouldn’t be even easier to reach.

By: Steve Habazin Entrepreneur Leadership Network VIP

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Adam Erhart

How To Identify Target Market | Target Market Examples Click here to subscribe: https://bit.ly/2HxjQRa If you don’t properly identify your target market then none of your marketing will work. Period. Not your ads, not your content, not your website, not your social media, nothing. It will all fail miserably. And I don’t want that for you. So in this episode I’m going to be breaking down exactly how to identify your target market and give you a few examples of what that might look like for your business. ***Marketing Resources: Work With Me: https://bit.ly/2FY2vzF Our Advertising Agency: http://aerh.co/1oVVeEc Facebook Ad Image Guide : https://bit.ly/2H9EPt9 FAST Content Formula : https://bit.ly/2JEu5kz 60 Second Video Ad Script : https://bit.ly/2GQF0Kl One Page Marketing Plan : https://bit.ly/2v6HPBp ***Let’s Connect: Website: http://adamerhart.com Click here to subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/2HxjQRa Twitter: http://twitter.com/adamerhart Facebook: http://facebook.com/officialadamerhart Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamerhart

Remember: You Are Not The Target Audience

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One key component of any marketing program is determining a target audience. That is, once you’ve developed a message, who do you want consuming it?

Ask yourself: Who should care? And who will care? How am I going to create compelling content that attracts the people my business can best serve?

If you’re representing a tech startup in Silicon Valley, perhaps your target audience is recent Stanford graduates looking for a job. If you’re promoting a skiing and snowboarding conference in Boston, then your target audience is most likely the avid skiers and snowboarders in the New England area. For sporting goods companies in New England, you want to be reaching athletes in the region but also their family and friends — those who could make purchases on their behalf.

It may seem like common sense, but your target audience is just as important as the message itself, and the channels by which you’re communicating it. Picking the right audience can turn an otherwise average PR campaign into a resounding success. Choosing the wrong audience, however, can derail even the best-laid talking points. Targeting the right demographic can be invaluable.

One of the most common mistakes I see people make when identifying a target audience is assuming that they represent the demographic. Just because you don’t use Facebook or Twitter, for example, does not mean that your target audience doesn’t. I often advise baby boomers who aren’t active on social media and yet are trying to reach Americans who use it every day. And I tell them: Your blind spot isn’t necessarily the average American’s.

My mom and I have a joke because as an 86-year-old, she doesn’t care for watching 20-somethings with bare midriffs shaking their bottoms on television. When she complains and asks, “How could anyone watch this stuff?” I respond, “Ma, you are not the target audience.” I’ve said this to her so many times that she hears me start saying that line, and we end up saying it in unison.

Take Instagram, one of the most popular platforms for photo and video sharing. Instagram has 1 billion users around the world. Just under 3% of Instagram users are in the 55- to 64-year-old age group, although many in that age group are probably professional decision makers — from small business CEOs to nonprofit executives. Users under the age of 35, on the other hand, make up more than 70% of the platform’s users.

Therefore, if you’re looking to target that age group with a PR or advertising campaign, Instagram can be a powerful tool — regardless of your own social media preferences. Even if you don’t post travel photos and share concert videos on Instagram, it doesn’t take away from the power of Instagram as a way to communicate your message to others.

Identifying the right demographic requires a holistic view of the general population. Think beyond yourself. From college students and CEOs to football dads and soccer moms, the United States is home to more than 300 million people of different ages, colors and creeds. We truly live in a melting pot. Also, just because someone is female, 40 years old and likes shopping does not mean that she is the same as another person the same age.

One 40-year-old might like shopping at Cabela’s for hunting supplies, and the other might like going to the makeup counter at Nordstrom. So it’s important to drill down and know your audience. I sometimes say that marketing is like marriage. You need to know your partner so well that you can anticipate their every move and preference.

Not everyone is like you. Not everyone consumes content like you do or gravitates to the same messages as you. What you find unappealing someone else may find incredibly tasteful.

Because there are so many people in the United States (and globally), picking the right target audience isn’t always easy. But therein lies a golden opportunity — an opportunity to reach consumers you didn’t even consider at first.

That’s what makes marketing fun (at least for me). You have an opportunity to reach all sorts of people by learning more about their tendencies and unique interests. The sheer size of the population forces you to learn.

Stepping outside of yourself is valuable in many aspects of life, but especially in terms of communication. Imagine how boring the world would be if you had to send messages only to people like you.

Fortunately, there’s much, much more to the world than you, my 86-year-old mom or me. Remember that, and remember to choose your target audience accordingly.

Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
Nancy Marshall Nancy Marshall

Nancy Marshall, The PR Maven(R), CEO & Founder, Marshall Communications, creating & implementing marketing/PR/personal branding strategies.

Source: Remember: You Are Not The Target Audience

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How to Uncover Your Competitors’ Social Media Strategies

How to Uncover Your Competitors’ Social Media Strategies

Social Media: Big companies have it, smaller companies have it. Celebrities, housekeepers, infants, 60-year-olds – even cats and dogs have it. Billions use social media every day, and millions of marketers are helping businesses grab customers via social. So how do you stand out? And how do you beat your competitors?

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Photo credit to @oliviamreyes, @saramaijewels, @ddonvand, @angelbengal

Social users are free to choose which accounts they want to follow and which content they want to read, so to be seen you have to create social content users want and need.

Coming up with content that is more effective than your competitors’ is not easy. You have to know which types of content work best for them and you need to see where they failed – this is where competitive analysis comes in, and we can help you with that.

In this guide, we will walk you through each step of setting up a social media competitive analysis, using the SEMrush Social Media Tracker:

  1. First, we will reveal your biggest online rivals and analyze their best practices on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (historical data only, if connected before April 4th, 2018), YouTube, and Google+.
  2. After that, we will help you identify the best-performing content in each of the social networks, paying attention to special offers and promos.

  3. Finally, we will show you how to track hashtags used by competitors and how to track mentions featuring your brand.

Setting Up a Campaign

Let’s say you are a business that offers pet food delivery services. This niche has a lot of competition, so how do you stand out?

It is always good to compare your social media strategies with your competition’s on a consistent basis, and there is an easy way to do that. Just set up a Project in SEMrush and select ‘Social Media’ on the ‘Projects’ dashboard.

The tool will automatically suggest your own social media accounts to track – just double check and make sure they are all correct. Next, enter your competitors’ domains and make sure their suggested social accounts are correct as well.

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Now that you have added the competitors you know, it is time to discover some you might not have been aware of. This is simple with our SEMrush Organic Competitors report.

Just type in your domain, choose the relevant language database, and you will get the following report:

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Pay special attention to the bubbles located above you and to your right. They represent the competitors whose total traffic exceeds yours and who are ranking for more keywords than you are.

Then go back to the Social Media Tracker and add these domains to your campaign in the ‘Manage Competitors’ section in the top right corner of the page:

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Next, take a look at the ‘Overview’ report to get a general idea about the company’s audience size, activity, and engagement for the selected period of time:

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You can switch between the company domains to analyze your competitors as well.

Identify Top Performing Content

To find out which posts worked best in a particular social network, refer to the ‘Top Content’ report below. To get more details about these posts, choose the social network you wish to analyze and click on ‘View all (choose your network) posts.’

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You will then see a list of the most engaging posts for either all profiles or a selected profile:

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Above we can see all profiles at a glance, but when you select a particular profile, you can find out more information about which content strategies worked for each competitor.

Targeting a holiday (Easter, for example) is an opportunity you don’t want to miss when the next holiday rolls around.

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Keep An Eye Out for Special Offers

When scrolling through the list of posts, pay attention to your competitors’ special offers to see which deals performed best. Look at the words used and the imagery; what worked & what didn’t? Based on this information, you might want to change something in your sales strategy, i.e. find a charity to partner with, provide coupon codes, or sign a deal with a particular supplier to secure further discounts:

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Track Your Competitors’ Audience Growth

Your competitors may focus their efforts on particular social networks, or just one. You need to know which networks each competitor is targeting, how often they are posting, what they are posting, and keep an eye on their monthly audience growth.

You can switch between different social networks tabs and go to the ‘Audience’ analytics section, which is available in each tab:

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Once you have figured out who is dominant in each social network, try to find out how often and what type of content they post. These insights could give you some direction with your own social media strategy.

Analyze Your Competitors’ Activity

In the previous step we found that out of all the domains we analyzed, petsathome.co.uk was particularly good at promoting themselves on Facebook. If your targeted audience were on Facebook, this data would be crucial for creating a competitive social media strategy.

With the ‘Activity’ report, you would be able to analyze their Facebook activity in more detail.

  1. You could discover how much and what type of content (photos, videos, etc.) they are posting:

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  2. You could see when exactly their posts get published and when they get the highest engagement:

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  3. You could compare their overall publishing trends to yours and your other competitors’:

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Spot Hashtags

Clicking on the ‘Hashtags’ report, which is available in the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+ tabs, will take you to a list of hashtags used by your competitors. Again, you can see what they are up to in the social media space.

If a particular hashtag catches your eye – for example, #win –  and you want to find out what kind of online competitions your competitors are running, you can filter out all the posts that contain that hashtag by clicking on it:

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Analyze Engagement Trends

SEMrush Social Media Tracker users can switch to the ‘Engagement’ tab and take a look at the ‘Engagement Trends’ graph to see spikes in their or their competitors’ user engagement. You can also identify which pieces of content caused them by clicking on the peaks:

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Track Your Mentions and Get To Know Your Fans

No need to explain how important it is to monitor your reputation. Get to know your customers and their mentions of your brand through the ‘Mentioners’ and ‘Mentions’ report in the ‘Twitter’ tab.

You may want to treat your most loyal customers to something special: sometimes even something as simple as posting a picture of their pet in your news feed can make them happy.

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If your company followed all of the steps above, you would have a good arsenal of information that you can use later when planning your social media activities:

  • You could establish your biggest online rivals, find out in which social networks they are doing a good job, and determine what types of content and tactics are helping them, as well as how often they post their content.
  • You could identify the top-performing content on each of the social networks you will be targeting.
  • You could spot some of your competitors’ special offers and promos.
  • You could discover your most loyal customers and take note of bad reviews as well.

This competitive data could give you a major edge over your competitors, so we recommend you check out the SEMrush Social Media Tracker today.

Set up your first social media campaign and let us know what you think in the comments below

By: Maria Raybould 

 

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