Understand your audience and build profits and reach

What does it take for your organisation to build its client base? Central location? Friendly staff? Competitive prices? Great quality product? Yes, all that. But most importantly, a business needs an audience - and you need to understand how to reach them.

Earlier this week I saw a Facebook post by a large national charity complaining that their members hadn’t turned out for an evening event they had organised, causing them to lose money. Instead of moaning about it, they could have grabbed the opportunity to understand their members better. They were supporting single parents. Even to an outsider it was easy to guess that many of these mums and dads had no access to childcare and were therefore unable to get out of the house once the school day ended. No wonder they didn’t show up.

Every organisation has its version of this membership, audience or crowd. That’s why you can’t hope to create great content marketing for a business until you understand the audience you are creating that content for. Your readers decide what information or product they want, not you. And you can only give them what they want if you have taken the time to understand what that is. For instance, this charity’s members needed to be given the chance to engage with the organisation during the school day, between 10am and 2pm, and they needed events to be scheduled around the regions, so that parents didn’t have to travel too far to get there.

So, here’s where a good marketing strategy starts. And, here’s where a good content writer starts. What does this audience like to watch, read or listen to? What do they like to share? What do they need from us?

Put your audience first and you automatically start to tap in to the type of content they find easiest to read. Potential clients and members will begin to see the benefits that you are offering them. Your organisation will start to sound like a person members or customers can relate to. And, because they are reading and acting on your content, sales, profit and reach will begin to grow.

Take a moment to think about how you are going to get to know your audience better, and how you are going to translate that understanding into user-friendly, attractive and informative content which grabs their attention today.

What does the reader really want?