Gracie Communications

At Gracie Communications, we spend a lot of time on defining and understanding audiences.  Part  of our marketing planning process is to create a profile of the ideal target audience: who they are, where they live, what they buy, what they are passionate about, what motivates them and where they go for fun.  Knowing the audience results in marketing strategies that act more like an arrow hitting the bull’s-eye than a shotgun spraying pellets. 

Sometimes we’ll create a picture or collage of pictures illustration of the ideal audience to help our clients visualize who they need to reach. Lately though, I think this approach creates more problems than clarity.

Why? If you always are looking for a match to the “holy grail” customer photo on your wall, you may not see the customer right in front of you.

Try this…

Spend a week journaling the clothes you wear.  If you are like me, some days are business suit days, some days are jeans days (and today is a sweats and hat day).  I’m the same person, but I can’t even get the Sears refrigerator sales people to talk to me on sweats and hat days.

Now think about how you acted all week.  I know I behave differently with my 93-year-old grandmother than I do with my college friends. I’m more reserved in a prospect meeting than I am with a client I’ve known for eight years.   If you catch me at Hubbard & Cravens in the early morning I’m all business. But I’m not that way with my kids in tow at the same coffee shop on the weekend.

In other words, if your business is targeting moms who are in the 35- 49 range who live on the north side of Indianapolis, I fit your profile. Most of the time though, you won’t be able to tell that just by looking at me.

So why do marketers work so hard to put a picture of the ideal customer in clients’ minds? The true person is a mixture of all the clothes in the closet and all the shades of his or her personality rainbow.  

To really know your marketing audience, it is increasingly important to have conversations with them. Do not rely solely on one-way advertising or marketing that targets a certain demographic or socio-economic touchpoint. 

Social media is one way to really get to know your audience, and is becoming increasingly sophisticated.   If you are trying to reach consumers, you also can encourage your employees to actually talk to customers. (Especially about things other than your product.)  Understand their tribes. Learn more about who they trust.

And most importantly, go see for yourself.  As I’ve written before, you cannot really know your customers until you get out from behind the computer and really see beyond the statistics and find out who they are.

Be sure to learn all the different sides to who they are too. Today, tomorrow and next weekend.