One of the biggest questions that I get asked is:
“On which social media channels should I be advertising?”
My answer to that is:
“Well, who’s your customer?”
You’d be so surprised how many times people cannot tell me who their customer is. My favorite response, which honestly makes me cringe:
“Well everyone’s my customer. Tom, everybody can buy from me – I can sell to anyone. Everyone on the planet wants to buy my shit.”
That is the most shallow, short-sighted perspective on anything that I’ve ever heard. No…that does not work, and yes…they are destined for failure! So anytime I hear that, I’m cringing a little bit and looking at the next prospect down the road who actually gets it and understands you cannot cast that wide of a net, especially online, unless you have billions and billions of dollars.
You have to niche yourself.
One of the smartest things I see people do is narrow it down to three or four active, highly trafficked, highly talked about industries and just be the best damn social media person and the best damn service for the telecom space. Whatever it is, niche in on that. Create the content that resonates with that particular prospect.
What do they look like?
One of the exercises we do at On Target with every client is to ask: Who does your target customer look like? We will actually draw them out. I want to see their face. I want to see what kind of music they listen to. I want to know what they eat.
I want to know what kind of active lifestyle they have. Because that’s going to help me determine where they’re hanging out. Once I’ve spent the time doing that, isolating those prospects and understanding them, then and only then can I start marketing to them and finding them at what social channel they’re hanging out on.
Everyone who has asked me:
“Is Twitter dead?”
Hell NO…it’s not DEAD! Is LinkedIn “the place”? It could be. It’s a channel. It’s a place. There could be 92 new places tomorrow. The key is – where is your customer hanging out and what’s going to resonate with them? That’s where you need to be.
It’s so critical that you niche. That’s when you know where to go: what to write, what to follow up on, what the content should look like. When you niche, when you isolate that target prospect, that’s when you’ve got something.
To listen to our original SmartAss Marketer podcast by Tom Jelneck, please click below.
On Target is an Orlando based Digital Marketing Agency that helps brands stand out and rise above the noise. Through great storytelling, On Target turns companies into thought leaders. Founded in 2005 as a search engine marketing (SEO) firm, we’ve evolved into Orlando’s only agency that specializes in creating remarkable online content. If you’re looking to refresh your marketing strategy, contact us today.
