Audience Psychology

[CCarter]

As the 9 continue to finalized their foundation, I took a step backward to make sure they identified their audience. So far one person has completed the customer profile and demographic trend, but what they sent in was nothing short of marvelous. It's more critical to do market research BEFORE you create a site, before your domain is registered since it'll be the foundation for your whole business. You might find out that you are trying to create a MFA (Made for Adsense) site with CPC (cost per click) at $0.05 - meaning terrible ROI for that vertical and you'd need literally 200K visitors a day at 1% CTR (click thru rate) for the $0.05 CPC to make $100 a day - if you are going to work on getting 200K visitors a day - $100 revenue is completely unacceptable at any level so that project is not even sustainable. You find these things out when you've done PROPER research.

When you write down a customer profile you commit ideas to paper which in itself is a powerful move. But now lets say you now have to hire an new employee or VA, you have something to give them so they understand your target audience better - that market research is critical to understanding your audience, their intent, their pain points, their specific interests and questions.

In the profile I got back the 9er stated their audience didn't read books, since they did the research on individual members. Then a couple lines later, they stated they would like to create a digital product like an ebook for the audience. Now obviously it maybe clear to you since I put the two sentences together that that might not work if they don't read books, but it might not have been clear to you as the person doing research on your customers until you committed it to paper like the 9 did, then have someone look it over. I've done tons of researching on different niches, and if I didn't write down the things I saw, I might not realize that I'm creating product that contradicts what my audience will digest - that's why having a second or third pair of eyes looking at your target demo and what you wrote down is important, since I've caught myself in situations where I was targeting audience members that don't read with ebooks - the solution - Youtube Videos and Video courses.

The key take away is - WRITE DOWN your customer profile and their Demographic Trends - then review it over and over, and have people that have marketing knowledge review it as well, when discussing this you'll come to conclusions that you may not have realized you've already subconsciously come to until you wrote it down.

What's important to understand as well is the behavior of your audience when they are on certain sites versus other sites. For instance someone Googling "cure foot fungus" is going to be more in the "I need to fix this now" mentality then someone surfing on Facebook. You can hard close a person coming to your site through that Googled key-phrase, versus the person on Facebook - that one you have to go in a little softer, since they aren't actively searching for a solution to the problem. The person with smelly feet might not even know they have "foot fungus" (I swear I'm assuming that's how foot fungus works, I just grab an idea out of the air), so they'll probably need to see an ad for "smelly feet problems", that educates them on what causes them. That's going to be a softer sell at first to educate, then you can hard close them after the soft pitch. But test everything.

The point, different audiences have a different mindset, and you can't serve the same landing page to people since they are at a different phase in the sales process - things to remember, where people land on your site is important too. THAT's the reason I state to get to know your audience before trying to traffic leak them. If you don't understand what is acceptable and what they like you'll be trying to hard close targets that aren't even educated on what's wrong with their feet.

Takeaway: Create different landing pages for different audience segments and tailor your message according to that platform and your engagement on it.

Homework: Customer Profile & Demographic Trends (Word Doc in Market Research Thread on WF - already assigned via Group PM).

Resources: https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/day-3-market-research.1283/

 

[Capital]

I'm in the middle of this process with my main project ATM.

For a product-based website, the conventional market research process works great.

But what if you have a magazine/informational site that covers 2 somewhat broad categories? I.e, Finance/Income tips + Productivity/Motivation hacks (obviously, you can break these two example categories down infinitely further)?

Thus far, I'm able to identify:

• Primary competitors (and analyze their content marketing strategy, mission statements, etc...)
• Commonly shared pain points for audiences in both general categories
• Pain points and questions to address for individual content topics/pages.
• Viable (general) monetization strategies that appeal to both categories + a few subcategories.
• Where some of my audience hangs out online (have great traffic leaking opportunities presently).

The problem is, I'd like to create personas for each primary segment of each general category. How do I go about collecting that information? I'd like to define my various segments thoroughly. This would allow me to optimize my social campaigns quicker, and craft content to each segment with more confidence and clarity.

My main roadblocks right now are:

1. I have a hard time collecting information on gender, age, marital status, income, behavior, etc. because some of my topics (i.e. finance tips) appeal to a broad base of people from all over the place.
2. When I spy on competition, I have no way of knowing who exactly consumes their content. Quantcast isn't an option in most cases, and apart from seeing who "liked" their FB page status updates, it's hard for me to get a clear picture of who these people are (when I look, it's people from all over the world, in different professions, 40/60 gender split, different ages - doesn't help me).
3. I might be trying to cast a wide net with this project, but that doesn't bother me because I see my competitors successfully doing the same thing. So it leads me to believe that they either: 1) Learned who their demographic was from trial-and-error. 2) Started on a single segment and narrowly defined topic/niche, and branched out from there. THIS is really killing me, because I'm not sure what approach to take.

Once I'm able to define the people in my various segments, I can look for overlaps of interests, pain-points, etc... among them. From here, I can craft a newsletter sequence or brainstorm product ideas that appeal to the most viable segments.

Any ideas that would make this process easier? I know I'm not a CC9 member, but I'm sure other CC9 members/readers may have this same issue.

 

[CCarter]

If you want you CAN create a customer profile for each category, but let's put things into more broader perspectives and use an example everyone can relate to: Music.

There are tons of genres of music, and just because one person likes one type of music doesn't mean they don't like another type. But the reality is rap music being advertised to a country audience at a country event won't work. Country music being advertised to a rap audience at a rap event won't work. Even though there are members that listen to both - the venue is also critical, the mood of what they want to listen to at the moment.

So with that in mind, how does MTV do it? They've got a schedule accordingly that caters (talking about the TV station when they used to play music) to each audience. They switch the message accordingly. They've are catering to multiple audiences and when a new genre steps onto the scene, if it's got a big enough crowd, they'll see where they can fit it, but their end demographic has to be segmented cause of how they target.

So MTV can go to a rap or country concert and connect with both audiences by crafting their message according to that particular audience at the moment, nothing wrong with that. But eventually if another TV station comes along catering towards just country music or just rap, the more narrower focused audiences TV stations will pull audiences away since it "fits them" better.

So using that example, Do you want to be an MTV at the beginning or a CMT (Country Music Television)?

Going broad caters to a bigger audience but leaves you defenseless when a more narrow focused site comes along. Going narrow limits your growth - unless you pivot later on. But if you have to pivot, you really didn't do your market research correctly.

So you have choices to make, but make sure once you make them, go all in. Me personally I'd go narrower, easier to focus and not concentrate on "maybe" people and chasing people not in my target demo.

 

[Capital]

Thanks Carter, that was thought provoking.

It seems like this is a matter of choice after all.

Perhaps I should trim the breadth of my site a bit, but still keep it somewhat broad for traffic potential...

As far as if I'd like to be MTV or CMT...
Hmmm.
I'm think it's possible to do both in the same session (if that makes any sense). Start out as MTV, and depending on audience response and the data I collect from social, narrow it down to the most responsive segment and trim off the dead weight then.

And once it's trim, I could create and/or promote products targeted at the most primary, concentrated segments on the site (maybe even create a different brand to promote narrowly targeted niche stuff and use the "broad" site as the springboard).

Holy shit.

Trial-and-error it is, then.

(sorry if this was rambling, I'm literally "thinking out loud").

 

[CCarter]

You can't do both in the "same session". That's like coming to a fork in the road and going down "both" paths, you'll soon come to a realization that you are not actually committing 100% since you always have one foot in another camp, therefore you'll never be truly focused. Choose a path, one path and focus on that demographic only, create a second brand and cross promote AFTER you've become successful, but your "both" answer steams from fear of loss opportunity.

There is no such thing as broad and narrow. It's either or - i have to say this cause your line of thinking is DANGEROUS to someone starting out and reading this thinking that you can have one foot in both camps which will ultimately lead to failure at both ends. Hyperfocus is going to be more successful then "general". No one reading this should take the "both" idea - even if you disregard it OP - some people have to learn the hardway I guess. I know that's how I learned a lot of what I know.

 

[Capital]

Okay.

Thanks for your brutal honesty.

I've never tackled a "magazine/viral blog" style project before, so working out the market research process for this type of site is just very new to me.

I'll figure it out.

 

[shiftymcnab]

Tried to access the market research doc on WF, however its not available to non premium members. Is there another way to get my hands on this? @CCarter

 

[CCarter]

Tried to access the market research doc on WF, however its not available to non premium members. Is there another way to get my hands on this? @CCarter

Yes within the Digital Strategy Crash Course - Day #3: - Market Research https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/day-3-market-research.1283/

 

[Amir]

What if you have a vertical that has men and women as a customer profile.

For example, topics on theology and divination tools are shared by both genders, depending on the content.

I'm looking in my groups it's mostly male oriented, except for my tarot groups/pages which are mostly women. And divination based keywords such "tarot reading" give me pretty decent CPC up to 3+ bucks a click.

Theology/philosophy/esoteric stuff is heavily male-oriented.
But divination tools like tarot, oracle cards are mostly women-oriented.

There are some content that includes connects tarot and mysticism.

Judging by the top content being posted on FB/or other platforms there are decent posts by tarot pages/groups and include spiritual mysticism and get decent activity.

There's content that wouldn't work for my esoteric groups/other platforms such as posts like "top 10 beginner tarot decks" stuff like that obviously wouldn't fly in the esoteric groups, again unless I tied something esoteric with it, "mystical meaning of the fools card" etc..

Reading this section again is helping with my dilemma. Because my site is similar to the MTV thing where I want to target everything. I deleted some of my seo posts because they were keywords that imply people at the transactional stage.

I'm at the "am I a divination type or an esoteric/mysticism based site" crossroads. But again, there's content can tie in both topics, like the "mystical meaning of the fools card" for example. That begs the question, why do I do with my tarot groups/pages.

Do I create content that appeals to both, or do I drop one and just focus on that certain audience.

 

[CCarter]

What if you have a vertical that has men and women as a customer profile.

I always suggest to create 3 customer profiles for clients. Do that and you are good. When creating content on blogs you'll have a particular person in mind when writing. I always give the customer profile a name so when talking about the potential we know who we are targeting.

Example: "Jeffrey" is profile #1, "Jessica" is profile #2, and "Kathy" is profile #3 for one of my clients. We have details on where they interact (online and offline), their age, occupation, etc. Creating content then becomes 100% more clear to the writers and how it fits within the macro goals of the client.