In order to make money in any business, you have to sell your product and services to people. Sometimes what happens is we just get so excited, and we want to sell all of our products and services to everybody! But the truth is, everybody is not going to buy from us, and it’s not because we’re not awesome, or that some people are better than us, or whatever… it’s because our products and services should be created, branded, and marketed to a certain group of people. But what a lot of new business owners trip up on is “How do I figure out who my people are?”
On today’s episode, we’re talking about getting clearer on your audience. We started out by talking about how new entrepreneurs wonder “Who exactly are my people?”, and that is a really great first question. Don’t feel guilty if you have just started out and you don’t know who your people are, or if you’ve been around for a while and you still don’t know who your people are! That is okay!
Just today, I was checking out my Instagram analytics, and I realized that some of the people that I think that I’m touching I’m actually not, and instead of me trying to focus on them, I should just focus on the people that are actually coming to me.
So, how do we get clear on who our people are? Now, if you listen to me for at least five minutes talking about business, I am very, very strategic! I’m always talking to you about getting very clear about where you’re going, because if you don’t get clear on where you’re going, you will go down every single route possible to hit your goal. But, if you know what your goals are, then you can create a clear, singular path to get you there.
If I want to try to drive from California back to Texas, I’m not just going to get in the car- I am going to pull up an address in my GPS, and I’m going to know that I have to go down this particular journey, because this path is going to take me to Texas. Right? So, how do we do that in business?
Well, first of all, ask yourself: as an entrepreneur, whether you’re new or been around for a while, where are you trying to go in your business financially? If you know you want to make a million dollars by the end of 2026, that’s like a five-and-a-half year goal. You want to be at a million dollars a year? That’s a goal.
Now the second question to ask you is, what products and services are you going to be offering over the next five and a half years to get us to that million-dollar goal? Then, you lay out what those products and services are, and I go okay, how can we price those products in a way to get to that number fastest?
Now, some of your products may be $10, $50, some may be a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand dollars to get you to that goal, right? But you get clear on that first, why? Because as a business, not as an emotional person, but as a business, your job is to get to your goals as a business the fastest way possible. Without taking advantage of people, without manipulating people, paying your employees well, but getting to your goal as fast as you possibly can.
So, if you’ve got this goal number, you’ve got these products, and you got this pricing that’s going to help you get to that goal, and all of your products start at $200 and they go all the way up to ten thousand dollars, you then have to go: “Who is it that I can target? Who is looking for products like this at this price point? Who is looking for what I offer at this price point?” NOT “Who around me can afford this?” No, who is it in the world that is looking for things like this at this price point right now?
For example, we just acquired four rooms in this office space, and because it’s my first time doing it, I didn’t really move in here with any type of furniture. I still want a beautifully decorated office space, but I’m not in the market to spend $10,000 on a clock or to spend $1,000 on a clock- I barely am thinking about spending $100! So, when someone creates a clock for $10,000 they’re not marketing that clock to me. I’m not their audience. I AM their audience in the future, when I’m making much more money, I’m married, and all the things.. but today, that clock is not for me! That is for someone that is willing to invest $10,000 into a clock!
So for you, you have to be unemotional about this as it pertains to building your business. You are an emotional person, but your business doesn’t have emotion. Now it’s not saying don’t care about people, or don’t welcome certain people in your store, that’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is once you start building your brand, then it’s going to be designed to attract this group of people, so you have to think: if we’re selling products that are at X amount of dollars, what type of person typically CAN buy this product, or typically WILL buy this particular product?
One of my favorite lipsticks is by a company called NYX – the lipstick is called Thunderstorm it’s like a purple-red, it’s $6 per tube, I adore that lipstick! Listen, I wear a lot of different lipsticks, but when I wear that one, people stare at my lips all day everyday and they’re always complimenting my lipstick! it’s always so funny, I always think I got a booger in my nose, but then I realized everybody is looking at my lips cuz they like the color of this lipstick, and so do I! When they created that lipstick with the price they created it at, they created it for me!
I don’t mind spending $16 on a tube of lipstick from Mac, but if I can get the same effect of my favorite color on my lips for $6, then I’m going to spend $6. But there’s certain women who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a $6 lipstick! That doesn’t say anything bad about those of us that do wear it, it is just not what they would do. and so if you’re someone and you’re trying to get to this million-dollar mark faster, and you sell lipstick, then you’ve got to ask yourself, “Do I want to price my product at this price point and reach that goal faster, or do I really want to work with the “everyday woman” who wants to spend $6 to $10 on a tube of lipstick?”
For example with our branding business, we do a brand consulting, website design, logo design package, and our packages start at $4,500. Our packages are not designed for college students because the average college student cannot pay us $500 a month or a flat $4,500. But the person that is willing to do that is someone who works a full-time job or has a significant amount of savings, they are in their early thirties and up, making at least 45 to $50,000 a year.
So, because we know that everything that we do is talking to that particular person, male and/or female, so every time we talked and we said it’s $4,500, we’re not flinching at that price, because we know our goals, and we’re going after the person that is 30 and up making 45 to 50k a year, and is willing to invest that type of income to have their brands built.
Some of the things that I always walk my clients through when we are developing their target audience is that you have to ask yourself a lot of different questions- some of them may make you feel uncomfortable, but they are very real questions as it pertains to branding, finding a target audience, and then marketing your products and services.
Understand this: if you decide to run a Facebook ad, Facebook is going to ask you these specific questions as well:
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Are they male or female or are they both?
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What is their age range?
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What city or state or country are they living in? What is their preferred language?
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Are they single or married?
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Did they go to college or did they not?
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Do these people shop at Target or Walmart? shop at Walmart or Sprouts or Whole Foods or a Kroger?
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What type of car is this person driving? A Kia or Toyota or Tesla? An Aston Martin?
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When they go to the mall, do they go to Macy’s or do they go to Neiman Marcus?
It’s knowing who people are, what they want, and how they make their buying decisions. You have to get very clear on who these people are.
One of my students is a Pilates instructor. She’s in my TikTok course called Monetize The Tok, if you guys want to learn how to build your business on TikTok which is a huge huge platform to do this in. She kept saying, “I want to use #Pilates to reach my people,” and I said, “Well if you use a hashtag Pilates, you’re going to reach a lot of people that love Pilates, you’re going to reach instructors and all that, but the people that you want to enroll in your course or to work with you are those that need to LEARN about Pilates.”
People like that may or may not be using the hashtag Pilates, but they are using weight loss, fitness journey, diets, keto, plant-based, or vegan. You’re trying to reach them WHERE THEY ARE, and you’re not reaching them with language that you use on a daily basis already because you know about the subject.
Tags you use on Tik Tok to reach people are not tags that you would use about yourself. The average person is coming to you because they want to lose weight, and they will use Pilates as a means to an end to get the results. She has to talk in their language.
So when we’re talking about you building your audience, you have to be clear. Every image, every word, every photo you post, every question you ask on social media is 100% designed to reach your people where they are, and draw them into you.
One of the things I enjoy doing is going out on social media and asking them questions- the more questions I ask, the more I know what they’re dealing with. I can’t create the next course or the next product if I don’t know what they need. I know a lot of my people want to get on TikTok and are afraid to, so I created a TikTok course for it that is simple and easy for them! I know many people are saying “I need clarity, I don’t know what to do next”, so I do consulting with clarity. Many people don’t want to design their own website and they don’t know how, and so we design all of that for them and we talk in their language when we’re out there in the social media world, to tell them “I understand, I hear you, I’m with you, here is how I can help you for this price”.
So as you are developing your audience, put yourself in these peoples’ shoes that are buying your product!
If you need further assistance I would be honored to serve you. Reserve a private consulting session with me at www.keenyakelly.com/consulting