Developing an audience

When you have no budget to create a high-visibility marketing campaign for your business, service or product, it can seem impossible to build an audience or find paying customers.

With some creative thinking and a bit of a plan, you can start to build a loyal base of supporters, says Vicki Allpress Hill.

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Developing an audience and finding people to buy, however, is not something that can happen overnight. It takes time and dedication. Think of this as a long-term effort that requires planning, thought and regular work.

Does the audience need me?

Start by turning things around and putting yourself in your potential customer’s shoes. Rather than focusing on the need you have for an audience, ask yourself if there is an audience out there that needs you.

Ideally, you would have identified a specific gap in the marketplace prior to creating your product, service or work of art. If so, you will already know where to focus your efforts.

But in the creative sector, it doesn’t always work that way. Often we are creating something we are passionate about and need to then find the audience for it.

Clarifying what it is you offer, why it is unique and which needs it might fulfil is the first step to locating your potential customers in this situation.

Use your existing customer base as the seed for growth

If you are fortunate enough to have an existing customer base, use this as the starting point.

It is unlikely that you have fully tapped the potential of the target audience segments represented amongst your current customers. Get to know them well, with the joint aims of serving them better (so they keep coming back) and finding others out there with similar characteristics and needs.

Who are your current customers and what common traits do they share as a group? How would you describe their demographic, lifestyle and other characteristics? What are their motivations for buying your product or service?

Ferret out this information by:

• Mining the data available to you, e.g. from purchase transactions, third party vendors or email sign-up preferences;
• Speaking directly to your customers by phone or in person – a good idea if you have a small base;
• Conducting a short survey – either in the location where your customers are experiencing your product (e.g. retail outlet, gallery or theatre) or via email or your website using a free survey tool like SurveyMonkey.

Your goal is to be able to group your customers into distinct audience segments. These segments then can become the basis for finding new audiences.

Identifying your target audience segments

Knowing who you are aiming your marketing efforts at is critical for success. It means you can tailor messaging, offers and advertising spend very specifically and increase your response rate. It’s the difference in results you will see between running a tiny ad in a newspaper that goes to most of the population and sending a targeted email offer to people on your list who are strongly predisposed to purchasing your product.

You should find as much evidence as possible to prove your identified segments exist, and then follow the basic principles of target audience segmentation. There should be one or more similar characteristics shared by members of the segment, a clear distinction between segments and you should be able to gain access to the segment for communication and delivery of your product.

To really understand who it is you will be talking to, undertake a Target Audience Persona Exercise with your team. This is a powerful process that will bring your audience segment to life and has the potential to change the way you view your product or service from your potential customer’s eyes.

Start building a database as soon as you can

Your aim should be to Build a Database of current, past and potential customers with whom you can communicate directly. This takes time, so start now. Depending on your target audiences and how they prefer to communicate, aim to collect permission to contact them via online tools and channels (email and social media). This will make it so much easier and cost-effective for you to create and deliver your marketing messages.

Before you start, clarify what data you want to be collecting. Think about what you might need in the future as well as today. Perhaps you have a longer-term business strategy of expanding into other cities. Ensure that you collect postcode information from customers now, so that you can segment by city later on.

Understand the rules and best practice of collecting and storing data. This is a matter of reading about the Privacy Act and the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act. The NZ Marketing Association has some best practice guidelines that make the legalities easy to understand. The important thing is to ask for the right “permissions” to enable you to communicate with your potential customers in the way you want to.

Get yourself into a mindset of collecting data at every ‘touchpoint’ between you and your audience and making it easy for people to sign up to email or social media on your website. Place the ‘sign up’ calls to action on every page of your website in a prominent place (ideally top right) to capture people no matter where they enter.

This database will become your most valuable asset and enable you to manage the relationships with your customers over time.

Developing a community of supporters

Building a community of loyal supporters around your product or brand and giving them good reason to spread the word, is a great way to build your customer base. Online social media tools and a strong email database are effective ways to achieve this at little cost to you, apart from time and creativity.

It is important to remember that the act of purchase, especially in a high-value transaction, is halfway up the ‘loyalty ladder’ of your relationship with your customer. You need to build brand recognition and trust first.

Spending time each day growing your fan and follower base on social media is a good investment. Eventually you can convert that community into sales.

Utilise partnerships to widen your net

Building collaborative partnerships with complementary organisations can be a smart way to rapidly grow your visibility and reach, especially if you are just starting out. Identify all the companies or organisations (or other entrepreneurs) you know of that reach the type of customers you would like to access (and would be open to discussing a mutually beneficial partnership). Before you meet with them, make a list of the things you can offer that will be of value to them, and match that with what they can offer you.

For example, their strength may be their database, while you can offer them products as prizes or rewards for their customers. You might suggest an exclusive competition for their readers in their e-newsletter that promotes your product and links back to your website. Both parties gain from this partnership.

Converting supporters into sales

Once you’ve built a base, you’re ready to encourage people to buy. Understanding what might be common barriers to purchase, and attempting to eliminate these in your offers and messaging, will help you to increase conversion to sales. This is where your initial research will come in handy. And, remember, don’t automatically fall into using discounting to create incentive. It’s a no-win tactic and some audience segments expect to pay for quality.

Create value for your potential customers by delivering on their needs. Understand them, talk to them and ask what they want. That way you’ll achieve the ultimate goal – paying customers who return for more.