Instead of spending the majority of your time crafting HOW you’re
going to sell your audience with your offer, focus on finding out WHO
the heck you’re talking to – your target market. Put your attention on
the catch and not the pitch. If you’re tossing a baseball to your kid,
would you turn around and throw it in the bleachers? (Hopefully not.) Or
would you aim it toward his glove so he has a successful catch? If you
wanted results, yes, that’s exactly what you’d do.
Look, it doesn’t matter how great your copy is if you’re trying to
get a man interested in taking pills for
PMS! Your copy may sing but if
your product is geared for a Democrat and it’s in front the eyes of a
Republican, how many sales do you think you’re going to get? Not many.
Let me tell you a story about when I was 17 years old. (I had already
moved 16 times by now and was rather shy and introverted). My favorite
pastimes were reading and writing. What a geek! But that changed when my
teenage hormones started kicking in. Out of the blue, I developed a
huge crush on the valedictorian, class president and tennis ace, Everett
Perry. This guy was a hunk and the most eligible bachelor on campus. He
was 6’2 with dark hair, blue eyes and long lashes. Way out of my
league. I realized in order to get Everett’s attention, I’d better
figure out what he liked. So I became a student of “Everett watching”. I
paid attention to who his friends were… and I went out of my way to be
nice to them. He was in the Key Club so I joined the sister club, the
Keywanettes. I became a tennis groupie. Basically I studied my “target
market.” And it worked. I learned what he liked. We dated for two years
after my successful stalking, er, studying.
In general, we survey these groups for our target markets:
Past customers
Ideal future prospects
People we DON’T want as customers
Corporations and big business literally spend millions of dollars to
fully understand how to segment and target their market. Believe me,
it’s well worth your time to look a little closer too.
You aren’t the only one looking to woo your target market, you know.
Learn about what other methods your competition is trying. Pay attention
to what’s going on around you. (By the way, competition doesn’t have to
be adversarial. Surely you have a strength to deliver to the market
they don’t. And vice versa. Think of creative ways you could partner or
joint venture).
Some ways to get into bed with your competitors, so to speak, is to
do what they do. Subscribe to the publications they read, both online
and offline. Join the groups they’re in. Pay attention to how they
promote themselves and follow suit.
Subscribe to their ezines using a free email account (Hotmail or Yahoo)
Study THEIR sales copy
Discover their USP (Unique Selling Position)
Join organizations they join
Read listservs (online special interest forums) they would be interested in
Keyword research
Competitive history (The Wayback Machine shows archived websites on the web so you can follow what changes they’ve made.)
Once you have a grip on your average target market, you’re ready to
eliminate all but one. Don’t worry. No one gets hurt. It’s just for your
copy.
You’re going to narrow your target market down to a specific tarket!
The word tarket comes from combining the words “target” plus “market”. I
coined the term because it’s CRITICAL you think in the singular, not
plural. Target market sounds like a mob. Tarket is one person. Before
you do anything…I mean ANYTHING. You MUST know how to collect the
critical info of who your tarket is.
“Target” + “Market” = “TARKET”
Target Market is Plural
TARKET is Singular
Do you know who USA Today’s tarket is? They tarket a 40 year old male
businessman who travels. Do other people buy USA Today? Of course!! But
you can only market effectively to ONE person at a time.
Got yours in mind? Now I want to imagine the hair color, gender, age,
health, marital status… everything you can think of… regarding your
particular tarket. At the end of this exercise, you should have an
imaginary friend to sell to. You should go as far as to name your
tarket. It really makes your copy sound personal when you envision
somebody real. My tarket is named Nikki.
Nikki Stanton, a 37 year old divorced entrepreneur with a web
conferencing business. She’s Internet and business savvy. Invests most
of her profit back into the business. Lives in San Diego in a gated
community with her 10 year old daughter, Madison. Involved in daughter’s
school and drives her to dance classes. Has a home office making
approximately $117,000 per year. Jogs 3 times a week in the
neighborhood. She loves to find bargains on designer clothes. And dreams
of visiting Italy with her daughter someday.
When I’m writing my copy, I have Nikki pull up a chair and I tell her
what’s on my mind in a way she could hear me. Then I write it out.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have male clients or women who are either
older or younger than Nikki. It’s just a powerful trick to get me to
focus on marketing to ONE person – MY tarket.
And that, my friend, is the fail proof way you connect with your audience.
by Copywriting guru Lorrie
Morgan-Ferrero
Get free access to 5 tips to
turn your sales message into red-hot copy that ROCKS… at http://www.RedHotCopy.com
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