System 3: Audience
Your Audience System helps you identify who you should be talking to.
[taken from LinkedIn short email course, needs rewriting for book]
With the first two steps of the 7 Systems of Influence for LinkedIn you now have a vision, and you know what makes you uniquely suited to turn that vision into reality.
But who cares?
I’m not being rude, it’s a real question. We need to make a list of everyone who cares about the knowledge you have in your head and wants access to it. Then we can figure out who your audien–wait–who your ideal audience is. Otherwise you’ll be like my relative who didn’t know who his ideal audience was and went out of business trying to sell ice cream in Arizona. Turns out Alaska is much more passionate about frozen desserts. If you want to make an impact, you better know who to target.
Just as you organized your expert zones to find your genius zone, you will pick your way through many good audiences to find your ideal audience. The quickest way to find your ideal audience is to find people who:
1. Are like you.
All other things being equal, you’ll find it easier to connect with and relate to people who are like you, and vice versa. For example, nobody can understand entrepreneurs like other entrepreneurs. If you grew up in New York, you probably get New Yorkers better than someone who has never been there. An English speaker who doesn’t speak Chinese may find it challenging to connect with customers in China who don’t speak English.
However, this doesn’t mean you should eliminate those who don’t appear to be like you. I was recently moved by an HuffPost article written by Lauren Hough, who wrote about her terrible job as a lesbian cable TV technician. I’m not female, lesbian, or a cable TV technician, but I absolutely loved the article. Maybe it was because I’ve worked in tech support before, or because growing up as a skateboarder when skateboarding wasn’t popular helps me relate to outcasts, or maybe it’s because she’s a good writer and I also enjoy writing. Maybe it’s because we’re both human, and she did a beautiful job expressing her humanity. While you generally want to narrow your focus, also be open-minded before excluding a type of person from your ideal audience.
2. Must have what you are selling.
If you sell marketing services, then target people who must have marketing services. Sounds like common sense, but it’s funny how often we get simple things like this wrong. Remember there’s a big difference between “wants to have” and “must have.”
3. Are able to buy it.
People who must have what you sell and those who will actually buy it are two separate groups. College students may think your $5,000 per month life coaching service is a must have, but successful executives with $10M in their bank accounts are an easier sell.
4. Energize you.
If you spent a day speaking to your audience at an event, writing a book for them, or engaging with them on social media, would you be drained at the end of the day and need to curl up on the couch with a few movies and a gallon or two of ice cream, or would you be jazzed and want to do it all over again right then? If working with your audience drains you it may be you’re not working with them the right way (see System 4: Content) but it also may be you’ve chosen the wrong audience to focus on.
LinkedIn Overhaul Step #3 — Your Ideal Audience
Just because someone will listen to you, or that they’ll buy what you’re selling, doesn’t mean this is your ideal audience. I met with a company recently that sells beautiful, custom, handmade wood tables. They’re not cheap, they can cost several thousand dollars. Customers often want chairs with wood that matches their table. This company charges $650 per chair, but they prefer not to make them at all, if they can get out of it. “Wow!” you think, “Those are expensive chairs, why in the world would they turn that business away?” Turns out they can make three tables in the same time it takes them to make a single chair, and about 20x the profit. Clearly, their ideal audience is people who want tables, but not matching chairs.
You have a lot of potential audiences, people who will like what you say and perhaps even be willing to become customers, but you have very few ideal audiences, where you can make a contribution that is truly unique. If you’re building your personal brand for financial reasons, don’t get stuck making chairs when you could be making tables. If you’re more focused on service than profit, the same rule applies–work with the audience where you can make the most impact.
To find your ideal, identify all your potential audiences, then overlap them to find interesting combinations. If this sounds a lot like the last lesson where we found your genius zone, it is.
For example, I interviewed 29 CMOs from companies like PayPal, The Home Depot, Target, and Spotify to write my book Chief Marketing Officers at Work. I’ve also written articles for Forbes and other top publications focused on the CMO role, but you know what? A lot of other people have interviewed CMOs and written books and articles about them.
I also lived in China for two years and know something about what it takes to be successful with marketing there. I’m by no means a China marketing expert, but if you overlap these two areas and ask “Who knows a lot about what it’s like to be a CMO at a Western company, and also knows a lot about marketing in China?” Well, let’s just say I’m part of a very short list. If I want to advise CMOs at US-based companies on how to enter China, I could easily make that my ideal audience.
I haven’t chosen to focus on CMOs and China. Instead, I’m currently focused on executives and entrepreneurs who want to build their personal brands and engage in thought leadership on LinkedIn. But enough about me, let’s talk about you.
Homework: Identify Your Ideal LinkedIn Audience
- Brainstorm a list of all your potential audiences. In the action steps for System 2: Genius Zone, we learned about your superpower and the problem it solves. Who are ALL the types of people who would be interested in having that problem solved for them? Even if you’re pretty sure they’re not going to be your ideal audience, list them to make sure you’re not missing anyone. Segment your audiences by age, title, location, language, role, interests, etc. For example, a recent client’s list included:
- Females
- Wantrapreneurs
- Entrepreneurs
- Startups
- Friends
- Business associates
- Children
- Parents
- Students
- Poor people
- Leukemia children and families
- Chinese
- Singaporean
- Global
- Former execs turned entrepreneurs
Now make your list.
- Which ONE of your potential audience factors has to be part of what creates your ideal audience? Remember that your ideal audience will:
- Be like you
- Want what you have
- Have $$$
- Energize you
2. What are other audience factors you believe may be part of the ideal audience you want to focus on? List a few, at least 2 or 3, but no more than 10.
Create your personal brand tagline.
Before we continue to System 4, take the information you’ve gathered and use it to create your personal brand tagline, or personal brand statement. This is simple, just fill in these blanks:
I help _______________ to ________________.
In the first blank put your audience, and in the second the problem you solve, or the results you deliver to solve that problem.
Here are examples of personal brand taglines we could create for well-known thought leaders. You may have never heard these exact words come out of their mouths, but through their words and actions these are the personal brands they’re communicating to us:
Gary Vaynerchuk— “I teach hustling entrepreneurs how to day trade attention.”
Amy Porterfield — “I teach entrepreneurs how to build email lists and create online courses with ease.”
Ramit Sethi— “I will teach you how to be rich.”
Each personal brand tagline identifies an audience, and explains the value that will be delivered.
What’s your personal brand tagline? Write it down. You may refine it over the coming days, weeks, and months, so don’t get too attached to it. I’ve been doing this for years and I’m always changing mine :)
Quotes
Case studies
Resources
Notes
None of this stuff works in the long term if you don’t fundamentally care about the individuals in your audience.
Your influence increases when your audience trusts you. Transparency and vulnerability breed trust.
Who is your audience? Executives? Parents? Bus drivers?
Where do they hang out?
How can you connect with them?
Power comes with accessibility
Email vs phone vs in person
One-way vs. interactive, one-way can still be meaningful (Oprah)
Going in deep with one can make others feel more connection to you
Not that we want to encourage people to be like politicians…but some of what they do to connect with their audiences can be used for good purposes.
Enemies of connection (on the audience side); distraction, deception, discouragement?
Sub-systems to make quality connections with audience: Empathy, charity, love, concern, humility, etc.
What kind of message will they respond to?
Make meaningful connections, #1 response to surveys of what people want on LinkedIn.
Size vs. quality
Buying fake audiences vs. raving fans
What you want your audience to say/think:
- Yes, that’s right
- I have so many ideas!
- I’ve never seen it that way before
- I’ve never thought of that before
- I can use this right now
- I’ve got to share this with so and so
- If I share this it makes me look smart
- If I share this it makes me valuable
A CEO I was speaking with yesterday told me he has a great following on LinkedIn of over 10,000.
That’s a decent number, but does it matter?
When I ask users what they value most about LinkedIn the dominant answer is always “meaningful relationships.”
Sure, you might have a lot of connections, but:
- Are they relevant to what you do, or is just a bunch of random individuals?
- Do they engage with the content you create by commenting on it and tagging others?
- Do they create content you find helpful to your objectives?
- Have you been able to take your online relationships offline?
- If you disappeared from LinkedIn, would your connections notice and reach out to find out what happened to you?
How do you define a “meaningful relationship” on LinkedIn?
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