Today I wanted to discuss your business audience.
On my blog and in my podcast, and I’m sure you see it a lot if you follow other marketers online, I’ve chatted about your ideal audience.
A LOT!
Sometimes called ideal client, ideal client avatar, ICA, ideal customer – whatever.
It’s the persona that you are marketing too – that one person you think about that represents your best (and hopefully best paying) customer or client.
But one thing not many business coaches or mentors talk about is the THREE DIFFERENT TYPES of your ideal audience, that all need content produced for them.
They are, of course:
- Cold Audiences
- Warm Audiences
- Hot Audiences
“So,” you may be thinking, “What exactly are they Jenn?”
Let’s take a look!
THE COLD AUDIENCE
Now, these people might still be your ideal client/customer – they just don’t know you yet!
A person falls into your cold audience if they have never heard of you, your brand or interacted with your amazing content.
They are your ideal buyer if you could just get to them and make them notice you!
Think of that boy or girl you had a crush on in high school, who didn’t even know you were alive – he or she is your cold audience.
How do you get in front of cold audiences?
There are a few ways.
And the best and most efficient way is why we LOVE people sharing, interacting, commenting and liking our stuff.
Because if someone shares your post – then their friends/audience will see it and there might just be your ideal client, who’s their friend or their fan, who now has the perfect opportunity to see your stuff for the first time – thank you sharer and thank you algorithm!
Other ways of getting in front of cold traffic might include:
- The strategic use of hashtags – they might search using them or if on Instagram they might following a particular hashtag
- Digital paid marketing
- Google searches
- Having Google My Business up to date and strategically working
- Being a guest on a podcast or guest blogging
- Using Facebook groups to give tips/tricks/value (like my Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group)
- Networking
The list goes on and on – but you get the picture.
There’s loads of ways to get in front of a whole new audience who have never heard of you and as long as you know who your who is and do this strategically, the benefits could be massive!
THE WARM AUDIENCE
Now, these people do know who you are – and again we want them to be our ideal client – not just any old body.
These people have possibly followed you on socials, interacted with your content, perhaps even reached out and had a discovery call with you or asked you a question via a DM.
They know you, like you but haven’t (yet) trusted you enough to part with their cold hard cash – which is, of course, the name of the game in business!
THE HOT AUDIENCE
The last audience type are our HOT people! The hot ideal client people.
These are your buyers.
They have paid for your goods or services – may be $7 or maybe $7,000 – it doesn’t matter, they still have paid you.
They know you, they like you and they trust you.
These are also our greatest assets because not only do these people know, like and trust you, are most likely to share your content with their audience/family/friends on social media.
Your HOT audience are the ones who will also:
- Likely open every email
- Give you constructive feedback
- Comment in your Facebook group (if you have one)
- Refer you to someone when someone is looking for the service you provide or to buy from you
These people are the most likely to become fans – not just friend but FAN.
If you think of the marketing journey as this:
LEAD to LIST to SALE to CONVERT
Or, another way of looking at it:
Attract, Nurture, Convert and Ascend
Your hot audience sits at the time of the wrung – these are the 20% of people that make up 80% of your income.
In business, we want MORE of these people.
WHAT IS THE POINT OF KNOWING COLD, WARM & HOT AUDIENCES?
Well, the point is to look critically at your content!
Specifically, your content strategy (click here to read my blog from last week which was all about Content Marketing)
We need to be producing content that will appease all three of these audiences.
It’s the part of the marketing strategy that I talk about a lot with my 1:1 clients.
We can’t have all our social content focussed on people who are cold and we are constantly telling them who we are, what we do, and how we do it – the hot audience people would be sick of that pretty quickly.
And vice versa, we can’t just be asking for the sale all the time, if you don’t have content that sets us up as the expert and lets our audience get to know about US – the human-to-human marketing part of the brand.
So now we’ve chatted a little about audience types, let’s do an audit on your content from the last week or month.
CONTENT AUDIT
Have a look at each piece of content you have created recently, and note who it is focussed at – who is the audience it’s targeted at (Cold, Warm, Hot) and how long along the buying cycle are they?
Make a list of this and see what you come up with.
When doing this exercise with my clients, the common mistakes I see are:
- You never sell!
You just assume your audience knows what they can buy from you. Yes, perhaps the hot ones do – but what about those who have just discovered you?
- You never introduce yourself or re-introduce yourself!
I’m sure you’re interesting enough to show up for your audience in a little “get to know more” post, live on Instagram or Facebook, or in your email marketing, once a month or quarter.
- You aren’t providing value!
Your content is all about the sell, or conversely, all about you, and you don’t have any actual value (to the audience) in what you are posting.
- Your content is the same!
You regurgitate the content that is the same thing/different day format. This doesn’t serve the hot audiences well – and we want to convert those amazing humans into super fans!
Here’s some simple tips on how you serve all audience types:
- Engage with new followers, likers, connections.
Send them a little message, voice message or video, show up for them! This is quite easy to do on Instagram and LinkedIn as you can directly message people from your business profile – you may need to be a little more creative on Facebook which doesn’t allow cold DM’s from businesses to people (they have to message you first!).
- Give some special love to your hot audience.
Send them a private message, specific email – just check in on them, even if they’re no longer a client! Remember these people loved you enough to pay you, and if they had a good outcome of working with you, are most likely to refer you or pay you again! If in retail, you could have a VIP club and they get special discounts or first looks at new ranges etc – treat them like royalty!
- Start looking at your marketing strategy with these 3 audience types in mind.
The warm and hot audiences are easiest to convert into sales – but don’t forget about the newbies – they want to know, like and trust you too!
I hope this has helped you think about your marketing strategy and your ideal client a little more strategically.
Now a note on this – I don’t expect you to go and change everything you’ve already posted, or feel overwhelmed that you have to work even more into your strategy!
But going forward if you keep Cold, Warm & Hot audience types front of mind when doing your marketing from now on, things will start to make sense and hopefully, conversions will come quicker and easier for you.
If your marketing is something that you are struggling with – then please reach out to me! I have free discovery chats available, where we can have a look together how I can help you. Send me a DM or go to my website and book a call here: https://calendly.com/jenn-smm/discovery
Or, head on over to my Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group – It is such a wonderful group full of amazing small business owners. Or, please DM me on Instagram or shoot me an email jenn@jenndonovan.com.au
I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land, the Yorta Yorta People, on which I conduct my business today and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples reading this blog post today.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR!
Jenn Donovan is a marketing strategist and social media extraordinaire, coach and mentor to savvy business owners. Owner and Founder of Social Media & Marketing Australia.
With a passion for making business simple, because it’s isn’t easy but it should be simple or at least simpler, she’s built a reputation for helping other small business owners simplify their marketing and businesses so they can reach their goals, be more profitable and live the dream (finding the freedom they set out to achieve when they started … the illusive small business owner freedom dream …!)
Jenn believes in giving before asking and that’s why she’s the host of the popular Small Business Made Simple Podcast.
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