Tag Archives: target audience
How I Use Those Seven Questions (Or Five of Them, Anyway) With Bredemarket Clients
Bredemarket’s “Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You” provides an ideal framework to launch work on a piece of content.
For one thing, they’re easy to remember: why, how, what, goal, benefits, hungry people (target audience), emotions.
So I use these questions in actual client work.
Using these questions with a Bredemarket client
Again, this isn’t just ivory tower stuff. I actually USE these questions. Here’s an anonymized example of how I recently used five of these seven questions to launch a new client project.
The questions I asked
- Why is this document needed?
- How will this document be used? As a download? As introductory text within proposals? As a demo script, video script, or webinar script?
- What funnel stage(s) should this document address? Awareness? Consideration? Conversion?
- As a related question, what is the primary goal of this document?
- Who should be the target(s) for this document? Decision-makers? Technologists?
- Approximate document length?
Just between you and me, “approximate document length” is one of the questions I ask AFTER I’ve asked my initial seven questions. I normally don’t talk about my other questions (if I tell you about them I will have to kill you), but they’re there.
The questions I didn’t ask
And no, I felt no driving need to ask about the benefits of the document. The chief benefit is more sales of the product that the document will describe.
And in this case I didn’t ask about emotions. Perhaps I’ll address that once I have a better feel for the document and start writing it.
It’s too early to say how these questions will shape the final content, because I just asked them. But I believe the answers will give me a rapid head start on creating the client’s deliverable.
So what?
But you don’t care about my client (unless you ARE my client and are reading this). You care about YOUR content.
How can my question process help you create stellar content and more sales of YOUR product?
If you want me to annoy YOU with a lot of questions (in the same way that I annoy my existing clients), set up a free meeting.
Behind the Scenes
Sometimes you just don’t go there.
How Do You Talk About the Product “Plumbing”?
There are a variety of hungry people (target audiences) who look at your product marketing content. And they all have different needs.
- When talking about an elegant water fountain, some readers only care that the fountain works.
- Other readers want to know HOW it works. Issues such as support and maintenance are critically important to these folks, but matter little to the first group who simply wants a working fountain.
If you are forced to speak to both target audiences in a single piece of content, how do you do it?
Very carefully.
My preference is to discuss the high-level benefits at the beginning of the content, and save the more technical uptime details and/or feature lists for later in the narrative.
Unless you are ONLY speaking to technical folks, leading with the “plumbing” kills your content. Someone who wants their police agency to solve more burglaries will fall asleep at a mention of 1000 pixels per inch fingerprint resolution or NIST-compliant lower palm print image dimensions.
Stay light, and only go deep to buttress your lightness.
Planning is Overrated. Ask Guns N’ Roses.
You know that I make a big deal about the step before content draft creation where Bredemarket asks questions and creates the plan. But sometimes that isn’t necessary.
Some music managers insist on a pre-programmed planning session to truly engage the target audience.
As American Songwriter notes, Guns N’ Roses didn’t put up with all that.
“I was f—ing around with this stupid little riff,” Slash recalled to Q Magazine in 2005, via a Guns N’ Roses fan archive. “Axl said, Hold the f—ing phones! That’s amazing!”
And that finger exercise, a guitar version of a Bach invention, was the birth of “Sweet Child O Mine.” The band continued to develop the riff into a complete song.
Or almost complete. Producer Spencer Proffer thought the song needed a breakdown at the end.
According to Slash’s autobiography, written with Anthony Bozza in 2007, Axl Rose listened to the demos on a loop, then started muttering “where do we go?” to himself, thinking things over.
And you know what happened next.
Remain open to sudden inspiration.
The “Open to Work” Effect
Jobseekers, including myself, have endured endless debates about the pros and cons of LinkedIn’s “Open to Work” green banner. While these debates seem to have died down, there are still arguments about whether the green banner does more harm than good.
- The good? Legitimate employers know that you are open to work.
- The harm? Scammers, AI-powered resume writers, and other ne’er-do-wells also know that you are open to work.
Customers won’t find you unless you buy this shady service
But this is not confined to jobseekers.
- Bredemarket receives an uncounted number of telephone calls, from multiple numbers, all of which begin with the same question: “Am I speaking to the business owner?”
- The caller then offers a free consultation regarding your Google Business listing and your Google voice search results.
- And when I bother to take the calls, they are disappointed to hear that Google yanked my Google Business listing (Google never told me why, but I assume it relates to the fact that I do not physically conduct business at my UPS Store mailing address).
- And that it was the best thing for me when Google did that.
You don’t walk up to my office and request a retainer or hourly services or small projects. You contact me by various means and we talk, you in your office and me in mine. Even the local customers aren’t going to drop by, especially since my City of Ontario business license prohibits me from meeting customers at my home.
Anyway, all these cold callers are NOT part of Bredemarket’s target audience.
And the myriad of Google Business Listing advisors are just one of the types of people who have no interest in buying my services.
How to attract real prospects
So I create Bredemarket’s content to attract identity, biometric, and technology marketing professionals. Two recent examples:
Oh, and I also create content for wildebeest fans.
Why Identity/Biometric Product Marketers Should Target Organizations Instead of Enterprises
Since I am not really a business-to-consumer guy, I tend to think of hungry people (target audiences) who number in the hundreds or thousands rather than millions. For example, if you want to sell your identity/biometric solutions to banks with total assets of over US$100 billion, there are only about 100 of them.
Marketing products in this environment requires a completely different mindset. Rather than hiring a Kardashian or Jenner as your influencer or spokesperson, you’d hire a Buffett. (If you could. You probably can’t, unless he owns the company.)
Therefore you need to concentrate on the players who make buying decisions, from the CxO level down to the users. That is the way to get your product into the enterprise.
But if enterprise penetration is your goal, you’re doomed to failure.
Why an enterprise-only strategy will fail
For example, enterprises usually don’t buy automated biometric identification systems. Government agencies do.
Believe me, I know. Many identity/biometric firms sell to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and their orders have been disrupted on and off since last October.
One acronym that I love to use is B2G—business-to-government. But I’ve learned the hard way that many people have never heard this acronym before. (Scan the job descriptions and spot the ones for marketing to government agencies that require “B2B” experience.)
So Bredemarket doesn’t seek clients that only sell to enterprises. I seek those that sell to organizations, both private and public.
If your identity/biometric or technology company markets products to organizations and you need strategic and tactical assistance, talk go Bredemarket.
Why Bredemarket Refers to “Hungry People”
If you’re new to my writing, you’ll notice that I use the phrase “hungry people” a lot. You probably want to know why: did I miss breakfast or something? Actually, “hungry people” is my phrase that I use instead of “target audience.” Here’s why.
You are not a target
At its worst, “target” implies something that you shoot, in a William Tell sort of way. If your weapon hits the target, you and your son don’t die. If your weapon misses low, you kill your son. Is that what we marketers do? Hopefully not.
You are not an audience
An audience is a group of people that sit in chairs while you perform your song and dance in front of them. (“These are the seven questions your content creator should ask you. Thank you for coming to my BRED talk.”)
- Sometimes the audience just sits. Not good.
- Sometimes the audience claps. A little better.
- If you’re the Beatles or Cheap Trick, the audience screams. But still not enough.
Clapping or screaming is nice, but this doesn’t count as true engagement. I mean, in a way it would be nice if you scream with joy at this post, but it counts for nothing if you don’t actually buy Bredemarket’s marketing and writing services.
You are hungry people
So I resolved not to use the term “target audience.” After considering “needy people,” I finally settled on “hungry people” as a temporary phrase. I figured that unlike “needy people,” “hungry people” are more inspired to act on their needs. They don’t just clap or scream; they are motivated to search for something to eat.
2 1/2 years later, I haven’t thought of anything better.
And if you need my help to address your hungry people, book a free meeting with Bredemarket.
When Your “Hungry People”…Is You
I prefer the term “hungry people” to the term “target audience” because it conveys the idea of those who really really want your product.
And therefore it stands to reason that you want to write content for your hungry people.
For example, if you’re selling automated fingerprint identification systems to cops, your content should probably talk about protecting residents by identifying bad people and keeping them off the street.
But Isabel Sterne warns that you don’t want to go overboard in this.
Why not?
“When you spend your time scanning your environment, adapting to those around you, and adjusting your communication style accordingly, you can start to lose yourself, lose sight of your message, and become forgettable.”
Let’s face it. If everyone mirrors their target audience, and they have the same target audience, how can you tell them apart?
I hope that Scott Swann and Ajay Amlani forgive me, but I’m going to use them as examples.
- Years ago Ajay, Scott, and I were associated with IDEMIA and/or MorphoTrak, but we have each gone our separate ways.
- Ajay Amlani is now at Aware, a U.S.-based biometric company that sells to multiple audiences, including law enforcement.
- Scott Swann is now at ROC (formerly Rank One Computing), a U.S.-based biometric company that sells to multiple audiences, including law enforcement.
Aware and ROC could simply mirror the needs and desires of U.S. law enforcement and mirror them back. But if they did that, Aware and ROC would appear identical and interchangeable.
And they’re not.
Aware has been around for several decades and offers everything from components and tools to full-blown automated biometric identification systems. Amlani, a new arrival, has a background that extends back to the FIRST version of CLEAR, along with multiple roles within the federal government and the private sector (including the aforementioned IDEMIA, where we did early work on venue identity verification solutions).
ROC is a newer arrival with a laser focus on several biometric modalities. Swann joined ROC after a long career at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal government entities, followed by time in the private sector with MorphoTrak (where we worked on Morpho Video Investigator together, a potential solution for Boston Marathon bombing events) and IDEMIA National Security Solutions.
What is Sterne’s advice for Amlani, Swann, and others who don’t want to simply reflect their prospects? Here is what Sterne does:
“I write about what I’m interested in, and while I do write for all of you (and hope you get some value from what I share), I mostly write for myself, to explore ideas. In other words, I forget about the room when I write….
“When you write for yourself without considering a person or group of people, you end up writing more personally and often more universally.
“The irony is that by writing for yourself, you usually create something that others can connect to more deeply….
“And the more you write from this place, the clearer you get on your voice, priorities, and overarching ideas, the better able you are to create something that resonates.”
Personally, my hope is that my infusion of myself in my writing helps me to stand out and to better communicate what Bredemarket can provide to identity/biometric firms.
Is it working? You be the judge.
The Benefits and Detriments of…um…Targeting
I’ve previously stated that Bredemarket is not the ideal content provider for B2C lifestyle brands. I’ve targeted a target audience of B2G/B2B identity, biometric, and technology firms instead.
Precise targeting can be very good…or it can be very bad.
A Targeted Weapon
Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the Neutron bomb
It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done
From the Dead Kennedys
Some of you may not remember the neutron bomb…and some of you do.
Since 1945, the common depiction of nuclear devastation was of catastrophic damage to people and buildings within a large area.
But then the concept of the neutron bomb was developed. Britannica explains:
“A neutron bomb is actually a small thermonuclear bomb in which a few kilograms of plutonium or uranium, ignited by a conventional explosive, would serve as a fission “trigger” to ignite a fusion explosion….
“Its blast and heat effects would be confined to an area of only a few hundred metres in radius, but within a somewhat larger radius of 1,000–2,000 metres the fusion reaction would…be extremely destructive to living tissue….”
As the popular press summarized it, neutron bombs, unlike older uranium or hydrogen bombs, would spare the buildings and kill the people.
What was missed was that the neutron bomb will kill fewer people in a smaller area.
The benefit of the neutron bomb?
The limited damage area promoted a theory in which neutron bombs could be used on the battlefield to target a limited group of enemy troops. This limited range would theoretically confine the damage to military targets without damaging “a whole civilization.”
But this benefit is also a detriment, as Britannica notes.
“However, other military strategists warned that fielding a “clean” nuclear weapon might only lower the threshold for entering into a full-scale nuclear exchange…”
And of course some opponents objected to the very idea of killing ANY people while leaving the buildings intact. Capitalist values at the forefront?
If you’ve never heard of the neutron bomb, they pretty much disappeared after the end of the Cold War.
Which is odd when you think about it, because the end of the Cold War made countries more likely to conduct small-scale wars against each other. From a military tactical perspective (ignoring the strategic or moral issues), neutron bombs seem perfect for such exchanges.
Bredemarket 