My DNA Experiment - Blending Mental Toughness And Massive Action Into Life And Business
I ran into a little trouble about a month ago.
As I was going through my experimental checklist, taking notes and validating what was working and not working for me I realized I was creating a ton of data.
This was surely a good thing.
Or was it?
I was digging up so much information that the checklist became very overwhelming.
This was a problem.
If someone was to go through the entire checklist they would experience the same thing.
The experiment crashed down when I was doing some basic keyword research. I was writing down everything my potential competitors were doing, noting the prominent key words.
In short, I ended up with thousands of keywords and no way to filter them out.
I almost scrapped the whole project until I “discovered” two subjects that made my life a whole lot easier: the Customer Avatar and the USP.
In the next few posts I plan on tackling both of the subjects, as I understand them.
These are not really new subjects.
They are tools that direct advertising experts have been using for decades. If you were to look at some of the A-list marketing blogs you would find that numerous people have done exceptional jobs in explaining the concepts in great detail.
Cody even explained them to me briefly over coffee earlier this year.
Some have even “dummy proofed” the process.
I am one dummy that did not get the memo.
It took me a long time to finally get “it”
Sometimes I am an incredible blockhead and it takes me a while to figure out why simple concepts such as these were the reasons why I was having so much trouble.
Without a fundamental understanding of these two concepts I was having trouble with content creation and crafting effective marketing messages.
I was experiencing frustration and writers block.
When the breakthrough happened, I had one of those Eureka moments.
Imagine one of those proverbial light bulbs going off above my head and I finally saw the light.
Here are my lessons learned:
I must warn you as always. These are some of my thoughts on the subject as I understand it.
I am no “guru” and I do not claim to be an expert.
I can tell you that once I figured this out about 80% of my frustration went away. I became more focused and it became a lot easier to stick to deadlines.
More importantly, people started to actually pay attention to what I was doing.
Let me first just give you a brief “big picture” view of the process and then I will tackle the Avatar.
The Roadblocks to Finding the Niche within the Niche
The hardest thing to do is to admit that you are one of your biggest roadblocks to succeeding.
Ego can be a merciless bitch.
I cannot tell you how many times I managed to get into my own way.
One of the most common traps that I fell into was finding something that I thought was cool, that I really liked, and assuming that everyone else might like it as well.
I dove right into the marketing process without thought about if it was really worth going after.
After all, it was an awesome idea.
I was wrong and I could not figure out why.
I became distraught, overwhelmed and thought about hanging it up.
My wife was openly asking questions about if this “Internet Marketing” stuff really worked.
If you have been there, you know how much of an emotional roller coaster it can be.
If it were not for the proven models Cody McKibben had taught me in the Digital Nomad Academy, I would have probably caved to the pressure.
I realized I was spending too much time on non-essential stuff and not enough time on actually building a strong foundation.
A strong foundation begins with proper research.
If you follow the 80/20 rule, research has to be the 80%. Without it, you are not going to have a chance.
I won’t go into that just yet.
I will handle research and picking a niche based off of my cheat sheet checklist in a very-near-future-post.
As backwards as it may seem, I am going to tell you about:
How to Get In Touch With Your Imaginary Friend
The importance of determining your ideal customer cannot be overstated.
I am sure you have seen many posts written about the subject, about how important it is, but few people really do an adequate job of really explaining what it will do for you.
The first thing you have to realize is:
The quickest path to losing money is to try to sell something online without first knowing who it is exactly you want to sell the product to.
It is not enough to want to sell something to everyone.
We are not all fortunate enough to be selling something as universally appealing as Coca-Cola or Disney. As great as it may be, we are all in the struggle just to get someone’s attention with our efforts.
We live in a world of sound bites and quick fixes. Getting someone’s attention, especially online where people rarely read anymore, is a very hard thing to do.
Before we start, we have to know just who’s attention it is that we want to get.
We must know and understand our target market.
This is a rule I broke.
Frequently.
Even though I knew better I still had dreams of selling something to everyone.
From what I can tell the problem is common.
Of the rookie mistakes, trying to sell a niche specific item to the mass public is the deadliest to your bottom line.
It makes sense, after all, products that are specific in nature tend to appeal to a specific type of person.
I figured, “This (insert cool product or service here) is awesome! Why wouldn’t everyone want it?”
I was letting my ego and what I wanted get in the way of what was reality.
I recently came across a great line from an article on the content marketing institute website:
“Repeat after me, “I am not my target audience””
When I first read the line, I stopped to reflect on its profound simplicity.
I then understood that I had been trying to market to a niche by talking about what I found interesting about the product.
If you are writing to yourself when selling a niche product that you may not really use yourself, then you are really rolling the dice.
You take the risk of disconnecting with the people who may need the product the most.
Again—when getting ready to sell a product, the more specialized the item is, the more specialized the market will be.
You should not try to market a specific item to everyone within a niche
Bottom line—you have to understand who your target is, with as much precision as possible.
Only then can you truly be comfortable crafting a sales message.
How do you know what your target looks like?
The best way to get to know your target market is you need to identify who your imaginary friend is, otherwise known as the customer avatar.
A customer avatar is nothing more than a virtual representation of your target customer.
If it sounds strange just know that this is not a new concept. Direct marketers have been using avatars (also known as personas) for years.
An easier way to think of the avatar is as an imaginary friend that you will try to persuade to do something that is obviously in their best interest.
Most people who sell stuff online—including me until recently—have no clue who their customers really are.
Once fully developed the avatar would tell a story, being specific down to the targets name, hobbies, job, likes/ dislikes, attitudes and worries.
Once in place the customer avatar has been proven to boost conversions and save you time and money. It will make it easier to gain rapport with your target customer.
It will help you connect with a target audience that you might have very little in common with.
The process will help you learn the language of the target market—which is important later on when you want to craft an effective sales offer.
In my next post I will delve into some useful ideas on just how to develop a customer avatar, or “imaginary friend” of your very own.
Until then, stay cool and tell me what you think…
Getting In Touch With Your Imaginary Friend: The Importance Of A Customer Avatar, Part One is a post from: My DNA Experiment