Audience

Whether you’re writing an essay, a novel, a memo, an email, or a sales letter, you’ve got to know your audience. Mapping out their situation, their pain, their ability to solve things is all essential information to solve problems. This letter does a decent job of starting to build a picture of your audience.

RULE #1
Write for an audience. Gary North explains:

One way to overcome the problem of not being able to write coherently is to begin with a particular audience in mind. Not only do you have the audience in mind, you have in mind an imaginary person who is representative of this audience. You write for this person. The same thing is true when you write a speech.

If you can get inside the mind of your listener or reader, you can structure your thoughts so as to persuade this person. Never write for a committee. Always write for a person.

I think the problem that puzzlers have is this: they are writing for themselves, not for a particular person in a particular audience. They are struggling to get things clear in their own minds. They are not struggling to get things clear in the mind of someone who reads them. They are not paying attention to the intellectual limitations, goals, and time constraints of the representative person in the audience they are trying to reach.

Van Til did write one essay in which he really did attempt to do this. It is widely regarded as his greatest essay: Why I Believe in God. But this was a rare essay. It was as if his essays were trying to convince his atheistic professor of philosophy, A. A. Bowman. They would not have convinced Bowman.

RULE #2
Bill Myers says, “Sell to folks who have money.” You don’t want to sell RVs to folks who live in the ghetto. It’s important that you know who you’re dealing with or transacting with.

RULE #3
Marcia Yudkin tells us to “Target your audience.” So it’s really by focusing on your audience that your ideas and solutions come from. No other place. Check out Marcia’s “Direct Mail Magic” course.

RULE #4
Customers, particularly new customers, have worries about your abilities. They don’t know you. They don’t know what you can do for their business. They don’t know if you can deliver what you promise. There are ways to assuage their doubts and move them more confidently and closer to their decision to work with you. Find these strategies from Marcia Yudkin here.

RULE #5
Conjuring the ideal customer. See what Marcia Yudkin has to say on the ideal audience/customer.

RULE #6
Attract customers through your authentic branding at your About Page.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE COMPANY?

1.  When did they launch?
2.  What’s their mission statement?
3.  Are they active on social media?
4.  Do they have a blog?
5.  How many people work there?
6.  What tone of voice do they use on their website?
7.  Is it consistent across communications?
8.  How big is their product line? (I use “product” as an umbrella term to cover services, too.)
9.  What do you know about their brand? Are they a household name? Do they have a cult following?
10.  You get the idea. Really dig into what’s already in your brain and get it down on paper.
11.  Next, do the same for the audience.
12.  Who tends to buy what your client is selling?
13.  What do you know about that person?
14.  Do they like to read?
15.  How much schooling do they have?
16.  Which social media networks do they hang out on?
17.  How much time do they spend online?
18.  Do they have a family?
19.  Do they drive a car or take the bus?
20.  What do they do in their free time? Do they subscribe to any magazines?
21.  Are they politically active? Religious?
22.  Do they live in a big city or a small community?
23.  What drives them crazy?
24.  What are they wishing they could change in their life that your client could potentially help them with?
25.  Obviously, you probably won’t know the answers to all these questions, but I put them here to get you thinking about what you do actually know.

Write it all down.

Then do the same thing for the product you’re writing about, if there is a single product. If you’re doing a broader project, write down what you know about the product line.

What does it do?

How does it make people’s lives better?

How do you have to use it to see that change in your own life?

What’s it feel like?

How big is it?

What color is it?

What emotions does it evoke?

How much does it cost?

Get it all down.

And finally, write down everything you know about the specific project you’ve landed.

What does the client want to accomplish?

Who are they trying to reach?