Matching your activity to your customer research
Pick up your first customer profile sheet; for this example I’m going to go back to ‘Yana the Yoga Instructor’. Start with a blank sheet of paper and, from the research you have done on this customer, start to write down what channels they are going to be interacting with, and where you are going to get their attention.
For Yana, she’s probably going to be on Instagram posting her yoga poses or watching other instructors on YouTube for ideas. She’s going to be a member of Yoga Alliance Professionals and receive the YAP email newsletter every month – which just so happens to take advertising. She’s also going to be where her customers are going to be, so she’s going to be on Facebook or setting up stalls at local events. You also know where she’s going to be in person; she’s going to be listed on ‘The British Wheel of Yoga’ in their find a yoga class directory, which will give you an address to post a leaflet to.
You also know when she’s going to be looking at these channels. She’s running yoga classes when the rest of us would be winding down for the day, so if you’re going to pay for online advertising there’s no point paying for those adverts to show in the evening. She’s going to be online between her morning and evening classes. She might run these classes from different locations rather than her own studio, so she spends a lot of time in the car meaning she might listen to podcasts as she drives. She multi-tasks a lot so she likes short, to-the-point information that she can watch on her phone while she grabs a quick lunch between classes.
So, if I want to get my message in front of Yana, I know the ways that I’m most likely to do this are:
- YouTube (especially yoga influencers)
- Trade magazine advertising or PR
- Leaflets in the post
- Podcasts (either creating my own or getting on other people’s that she’s likely to listen to)
It’s quite simple to work these out once you know your customer. And if you feel that you don’t, then go back to the chapter on customer research and follow the exercises, set up interviews and study your customers until you become an expert on who you are selling to. These are all thoughts I had from a couple of minutes with my notebook thinking logically about a yoga instructor. I wrote ‘Yana’ in the middle then drew lines and bubbles around her name with what she would be doing daily and how I could get a message in front of her. And I know nothing about yoga. If you have identified Yana the Yoga Instructor as one of your customer profiles then you will have already spoken with a handful of yoga instructors and know them far better than me, meaning that your list will beat mine hands down. If you don’t know your customer you are just guessing and hoping about what might work.
