Jeff Cutler’s keynote presentation “Audience, Audience, Audience” for Tech Day Camp 2013 was a journey about the importance of understanding your audience and how to address your marketing to their needs. Jeff content and social media specialist for the Society of Professional Journalist, is a skilled communicator in traditional and new media and nationally recognized marketing expert. He is frequently tapped to train large and small organizations in the use of social media tools.
As a journalist, Jeff knows how important understanding your audience is. To him, it’s the most important thing for a business owner to understand, more than messaging or funding. None of that matters if you don’t understand your audience.
Audience is anyone you are going to do business with. The problem is that there are so many different people that you are going to do business with. It takes work. You need to do research and find out who you are working with, using your product, or writing about it. Learn to speak their language. Accept feedback and make changes when you can and it’s appropriate. This can help you deepen relationships and grow your business.
To engage, think about a cocktail party do’s and don’ts. Don’t rush in and hand out your card. Be like a journalist and ask questions, don’t sell right away and be polite. Find out about them and their interests, they have value that can help you other than just buying what you are selling. Remember you are not the audience.
Think like a customer. To sell John Brown what John Brown buys, you have see the world through his eyes.
See just the deck of slides: jeffcutler.com/audience.pdf