I consume a lot of information on a weekly basis about marketing.
I filter it down and only bring you the best most up to date strategies and tactics that are producing results in the real world.
This week I was listening to an online marketing podcast on “How to find out where your market is hiding?”
Here are my “cliff notes” on the close to 1 hour long episode. ..
Figuring out where your market is hiding is the most important part of online marketing.
You have a product or service that would help people.
The next step is figuring out how to get your product or service in front of the right people.
BIGGEST MISTAKE
The biggest mistake most business owners make is…
You actually have something that people want but not figuring out where your actual market is online.
If you put your ad in front of the wrong people, your campaign will fail.
What platform should you be advertising on, and what approach should you take?
Your approach must differ based on the platform that you are using.
2 Traffic Platforms
There are 2 different kinds of traffic platforms:
- Seeker/Searcher – with people having intent and actively searching for a product or a solution to a problem
- Interruption – with people not actively searching for a product or to solve a problem
3 States of mind of your prospects
There are also 3 different states of mind that your prospects are in:
- Unaware (Cold) – completely unaware of your product or service, or unaware of the problem that your product or service solves.
- Aware (Warm) – they know they have a problem but they are not actively searching for a solution
- Hungry (Hot) – someone that has a problem and is actively searching for a solution now
Once you understand what kind of mindset your prospects are in, then you can decide where to go after them.
With the proper marketing funnels you can actually take someone from being unaware all the way to being hungry for your product or service.
You have to engineer that process.
Match The Mindset With The Traffic Platform
Now you can match the mindset with the 2 different types of traffic platforms we listed above.
If they are in the “Aware” or “Hungry” mindset they are more of a searcher/seeker and you would want to use a platform like Google Search or YouTube Search.
These people are actively searching for your product or service…I have a leaky roof and need a roofer or I have a leaky faucet and need a plumber or I am getting divorced and need an attorney, etc…
You can go for the sale much more quickly because of the mindset that these prospects are in.
If they are “Unaware” and you need to move them in the “Awareness” phase, that’s interruption which is a platform like Facebook or Twitter.
Big Mistake With Facebook
Another big mistake with Facebook is trying to go right for the sale. These people don’t know you and they are in the “Unaware” mindset.
The social channels (interruption based marketing) are more like a coffee shop…it would be like going up to someone and trying to sell them something right away (no one likes that person) instead of trying to establish a relationship first.
You have to start off by educating them on the problem that they might have and then transition them into why your product or service could be the best solution for them.
You want to put a compelling piece of content in front of your audience. Picture your prospects thumbing through their news feed on Facebook…you want to capture their attention enough to have them stop and read it.
They have over 900 million users getting on FB an average of 14 times per day. Your target audience is on there…
It Is A Good Idea To Use A Combination Of Both
A lot of times when you are marketing to the “Unaware” prospects on social media, they will then go to Google and search for your company to find out more about you or verify that you are a reputable company.
At any given time there is 5-10% of the market that is actively searching for a product or service.
So you can capture the ~10% of people ready to buy on Google while you are transitioning the other ~90% on Facebook from “Unaware” to “Aware and Hungry”.
In search/intent based marketing like Google you can target your prospects by the keywords or phrases they are searching for. This is the low hanging fruit, but you can’t scale this. You can’t create more people searching.
In interruption based marketing like Facebook you can target people based on their demographics like age range, where they live, occupation, likes, etc… This you can scale and make more people aware and move them along your sales funnel.
Conclusion
Using both of these platforms allows you to uncover the best prospects in your target audience. When you engineer this process correctly it can provide a steady stream of customers to your business.
Then your question goes from “Where can I find more customers?” to “How much business can we handle, before we have to pause the marketing?”