The Key to Great Marketing – Meet Them Where THEY Are!

Your customers I mean, where are they?

What are their worries? What do they yearn for? What do they want? What do they need? Often if you have an answer to these questions you have been where they are… so put yourself back in that place and think like your audience. Great marketing is all about knowing your customer. Once you have put yourself in their shoes, you will find them, know them and understand them well enough to give them what they want.

Being human is what social media is all about, no longer are we above our audience instead we are all just people chatting to people about their life challenges and we might just have an answer to some of them… which is our core business!

Giving people what they want and need!

Know who your audience are and Being Human allows you to think differently about the people out there who may need what you have to share. Being Human is at the heart of the rise of social media, your audience is no longer your market, unless you appeal to them as people AND are prepared to meet them where they are.

Social Media is all about Being Human:

• It allows you to speak honestly and imperfectly to people, instead of treating them like lab rats whose responses to your stimuli have been predicted, tracked, and already reported on the balance sheet.
• It allows you to hear their delight in your product and service more clearly, and it allows them to share that delight with their family and friends.
• It allows you to tell the story of your company without it becoming the Hollywood adaptation where the soul has been sucked out in pursuit of demographically-targeted, pasteurised and homogenized perfection.
• People who feel like they’ve been heard are happier than people who don’t. The guy who can share stuff he likes without getting told via certified mail to stop. People who feel like they have some power to influence the businesses they choose to work with feel like they have some stake in and some level of stewardship for that company.

How do you do business while Being Human?

1. First and foremost humans have a prioritised need to belong, we are social creatures whose very survival from birth is tied into being accepted by our parents and others in order to survive. We have learned we have a greater chance of survival when we congregate in groups, so we form villages and towns and groups and communities. We form alliances and fan clubs and even tribes and gangs in order to feel we belong. Knowing this is crucial to your social marketing, how do you help your audience identify with you and your business? How do we help them feel they belong in our community?
2. People also need to feel acknowledged and validated, (see my previous post) again this is tied to our survival, human babies are unable to survive on their own, if our cries go unacknowledged and our wants and needs un-validated we do not survive. This gives us a need to seek out those who do acknowledge and validate us, business owners who get this on every level will thrive as their community gathers around them and not only become loyal fans and customers but your brand advocates and good leaders, which is what the truly great business owners will need to be, know that their community must feel both acknowledged and validated regularly to feel that sense of security that comes with belonging to a community that knows who they are.
3. People (humans) need to feel they are in good hands when they look for a leader. They will look for someone who stands out and is not afraid to be remarkable and to stand for something. Allowing your values and company culture to develop and be a part of your marketing is so important in the age of social marketing. Your audience wants to know you! They also want to know you are human just like them. Richard Branson who is actually totally hidden from the mainstream, does this beautifully, by being seen where his audience is, by appearing to be approachable, being there on social media where it seems so easy to chat to him, and by allowing his humanity and human-ness to be seen in public. He doesn’t hide behind some sort of facade of fake perfection we see him warts and all, and we see his adventurous and uninhibited spirit imbue everything he does.
4. Be Human in your business, be personable, be social, be approachable and reachable, now more than ever before our audience want to know the people behind their favourite brands, they want to know they can trust and like them before they buy from them. The age of the faceless corporation is gone and we all want to know who we are dealing with. Get out from behind your desk and interact with your audience and meet them where they are on social media, at offline events and network with them (not just with other business owners), again Richard Branson does this beautifully when he turns up unannounced and goes about shaking hands will everyone he passes, when was the last time you did something like that? I personally have not only shaken his hand twice I have held a 10 minute conversation with this amazing entrepreneur, he is so nice and I have heard stories of others being invited in for coffee after knocking on his door. Take a leaf out of his book and remember you too are human, you are not just a business!
5. Remember to take on the feedback you are given, negative feedback should not have you scrambling for statistics so much as measuring the truth of that feedback in your social media results. Is that feedback relevant and what can you learn from it? Perhaps you can learn that your conversations are actually broadcasts and advertisements and that you are not really carrying on real human conversations? Think about it! Measure the success of your conversations, figure out which ones lead to more engagement, more fans and advocates and thus more sales and adjust your conversations until you truly connect at a human level with those who want what you have to sell them. Measurement is vital for growth, but knowing what to measure is vastly more important than collecting all kinds of numbers with no possibility for impact.

Remember BEING HUMAN MEANS – More followers – More influence – Cooler tools – More power!