Insights Post

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Who’s In Your Bullseye? Discover Your Ideal Audience

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It turns out that playing darts has A LOT to do with marketing.

Too many organizations approach marketing like throwing darts haphazardly at the board. They waste their resources on communications, promotions and events; yet they aren’t solving the problems of their ideal buyer. These random acts of marketing waste your people’s time and your organization’s money. Most importantly, they do not educate or serve the needs of your number one priority: your ideal buyer, client, and member.

Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Aim to hit the bullseye instead!

Focus on that one person you love to help the most. Where can you really make a difference? This is your ideal buyer – your perfect target. Your key to growth and success.

When you know who your ideal buyer is, you know how best to communicate with them. You know what they need and when they need your product or service. Then you get the easy job of communicating with them in all the right ways and channels to make them want what you offer.

When you know who your ideal buyer is, you have a leg up on your competition. You will save time and money, as well as bring clarity to your team on all the things you should be doing and what you can stop doing.

When you do that, everything else will be a win.

Video Transcript

Justin: Hey! We’re from Mercury Creative Group, and we’re here to talk about our Mercury Method™.

Cheri: These Mercury Messages are a little bit about what we do, how we do it, and who we do it for.

Justin: Our clients see the value in us putting these avatars together towards the end, but it’s hard for them at first. Why are we spending so much time on one person when we have other clients or other members that we need to attract and solve some of their problems? But getting them to understand that we can’t be everything to everyone, that if we work on that one ideal buyer, we can really define the path, define their pain points, and get them to align with that organization. So they know that “I need them” and they self-identify. And it makes that sales process way easier.

And it also keeps our team or other marketing teams – we have guardrails. We know what we should be doing and for whom. And when leadership approaches us with a great new idea, you can go back to them and go, “This does not do anything for Michael or for Monica. We’re not helping them become better. So it’s not an initiative, for example, that we should pursue.” So there’s that confidence to make really good decisions and especially to decide: what are we not going to do? So we can focus on one or two things really well.

Cheri: That’s a great way to explain it. I have a story to share. Just this week, actually, I was talking to my mom. She just turned 68. She’s never worked in marketing. She’s never really even worked for a company. She lives in South Dakota and she and my stepdad run a farm. But she asked, how are you able to write content for a client? How do you know more about their audience than they do?

Justin: Good question, Carol.

Cheri: Right? And I used her. I said, Well, I don’t know more than the client does, but I help them discover who their ideal audience truly is. And the way I do that is, I go in through discovery. We ask a whole bunch of questions to really identify that ideal audience. We apply research and demographic research to it. So it’s a little bit of art and science working together, and then we choose that avatar.

So I said, mom, you are a 68-year-old woman living on a farm in South Dakota. If you were somebody’s ideal client, what we would do is think about it in terms of a dartboard. So if you’re playing darts, you get the most points the fastest by hitting the bullseye. So we put Carol in the bullseye, and we just want to talk to Carol, because the more Carols we get, the more points we get, the more revenue we get, the more members we get, the fastest. So I took that and said Carol is in the bullseye.
And some of our clients come back and go, Well, what about Katie or what about Laura?

And those people may exist in those outer rings of the circle. You still get points if you hit those outer rings, if you’re playing darts, you still get points for them. And we would still welcome Katie and Laura with open arms. We would still sell our product and service to them and have those conversations. But when we’re talking, when I’m writing, I’m writing to Carol, and I’m talking to Carol, and I want to make sure the messaging resonates with her. And even my mom on her farm in South Dakota said, oh, that makes sense to me.

If you need help identifying your bullseye or your ideal buyer, we’re here to help.

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