Was listening to a podcast the other day driving down from Raleigh, NC to Wilmington, NC from John Jantsch, founder of Duct Tape Marketing.

BTW, I’ve long been an admirer and follower of John’s teachings. Check it out for yourself if you’re similarly interested. If you follow John and his teachings, you know that he likes to work with small business owners & start with strategy rather than tactics. Rarely a podcast that I listen to that doesn’t contain at least a nugget or 2 that properly applied can make you and your organization better.

Rather than starting out by investing a bunch of your hard earned $$$ in tactics like a website, SEO and social media, John would admonish you to start with strategy.

Often times, we start this engagement by asking the question “who is your target audience?”

Taking a “deep dive” into the topic of target audience goes beyond simple demographics like, age, sex, education level, income level, marital status etc. It should also be noted that when you are first starting up, you can;t be as selective as you might like once you’ve gotten some traction in your respective space.

John would ask you to start by writing down the characteristics of your very best client or customer. At the same time, maybe lay out the characteristics of your client or customer “from hell.” To conclude the exercise, lay out a “tweener.”

Breaking it down further, John would next ask the following questions–

What are the “must haves”, “nice to haves”, and “ideal” characteristics of your target audience?

As an example, in my coaching practice:

Must have

  • Be a CEO, President or Business Owner of a $1M-$100M topline revenue business
  • Budget
  • Visionary and “sees” the possibilities
  • Active not passive management
  • Migrating from “doer” to “leader”
  • Understands role as culture warrior in his/her own business;  sees the long-term value in participating in a crucible for candor and accountability
  • Humility and empathy
  • Strong work ethic

Nice to have

  • Pleasant disposition
  • Loves people and recognizes that people are the path to accelerated business success and prosperity
  • Stuck, stalled or stagnant on their journey

Ideal

  • High EQ (behavioral tendencies) in addition to IQ
  • Green and growing
  • Coachable, e.g. “great leaders are great coaches”
  • Willingness to be vulnerable
  • To go fast go alone; to go further, go together

Have you sat down recently and asked your team “who is my target audience?” (Fancy $10 marketing term for all of this is “persona’s”)

Think about it. What are the characteristics of your target audience?