Helping Your Client Define Their Audience

How do you guide a client to finding their target audience? How do they find out who they want to be talking to? This week we are looking at a question from a student about helping your client define their audience.

STUDENT QUESTION: How do you help your client know who they’re talking to?

JOHN-CLAY: It always comes back to who’s watching it, because you can say, why are you starting a business? And would they tell that story differently, if they were making it to other business owners? Would they tell the story differently to people who are trying to start a coffee shop? Would they tell the story differently to people who want to buy a coffee? Would they tell the story differently to moms versus college students?

Anytime you start thinking about who you’re talking to, you start tailoring what you have to say. So knowing who you’re talking to will be helpful. Otherwise it just goes on the About page; and there is a place for that kind of video, but it’s not usually the first video people are asking for.

The other question is, “How could business be better?” This is sometimes an easier question than saying, who’s your target audience? What do you do? They can glaze over, like “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Maybe they genuinely just make coffee and they happen to be situated in a good spot, and they don’t have any drive and they haven’t thought about it. They’ve lucked into it, there’s just enough business to keep them going. But most people, if they have any interest in maintaining any amount of business, even if they’re a non-profit, will have some sort of response to, “How can business be better?”

That opens a whole door of, who, when, why? Why do those people not come? Most of the time they say, “Well, they don’t know about us.” If they knew about you, why would they not come? You have to get past that one. “Well obviously making the video, then, will help them know about us.” They can know you exist by driving by on the street, that doesn’t mean they’re going to come in. Once they know, what do they need to know? So that’s the next level of conversation. How could business be better?