The best target audience for our product is the people that we consider “the perfect customer”, called our avatar. Pushing our products to our avatar, preferably in a group setting, makes for business growth and better product sales. In this episode, host Ken Courtright discusses how we should sell our product or message to groups of people that have evidence of interest.
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Evidence Of Interest
Episode 93 is titled Evidence of Interest. I bring this up because while wrapping up the week at CEO Space, which I’m a faculty member, a couple of other faculty members took me aside and said, “Can we chat with you for a minute?” I said, “Sure, what do you got?” They sat me down and they said, “What we’re trying to figure out is how we can better position our businesses to upgrade the type of clientele, get in front of more eyeballs, and polish up our offering.” I said, “Let’s rock and roll.” I get a piece of paper. I said, “Let’s do a quick three-point exercise.” I said, “Number one, who is your avatar?” That’s a fancy word for your perfect customer. Both of them ironically have a similar avatar, which is the CEO of a two-year-old company or older, meaning not an upstart, not an entrepreneur between projects, not a serial entrepreneur. They work well with funded businesses, companies that have been around for a couple of years. They’ve got through the growing pains. They have a few employees to 1,000 employees. They’re up and running.
I said, “Your avatar is an executive, specifically even hopefully a CEO, possibly somebody in control of an organization or a small company.” They said, “Yes, perfect.” I said, “Number two, where do groups of your avatar hangout?” They paused for a minute and said, “Where do groups of CEOs hangout?” I said, “Where do groups of CEOs hang out? Where do groups of executives, leaders of a company and leaders of organizations hang out together in a group?” They went silent for a bit. All of a sudden, they started saying things like, “Business conferences like CEO Space, Secret Knock,” which is another event that has a couple of hundred business people. “Your event,” they were pointing to me. I have a Digital Footprint event a couple of times a year. I said, “Think differently. Think outside of business conferences.” They’re like, “Okay.” I said, “I’ll tell you what. Would you agree that they might also as executives, still be going to school a little bit for continuing education? Maybe they take part-time Harvard Management courses or they attend business conference specifically for further education, maybe for an accredited education.”
No matter what your client base is, everybody has a group to hang out with. Click To TweetThey go, “Definitely they do that.” I said, “What about Mastermind groups where there are 12 to 20 to 100 executives like Vistage.” They’re like, “Definitely.” I said, “How about the Inc. 5,000 conference, where the 5,000 fastest growing businesses in the United States are invited in? Usually, about 2,500 show up. Some of the biggest companies there walk across the stage, get an award for the fastest-growing US business. They’re established. They have four years of tax returns.” They’re like, “That’s a good one.” I said, “Number three, how can you get you, your brand, your company, your everything right in the middle of those large groups?” There was a little bit of a pause. I said, “Number one, you could sponsor one of those events and then you can speak on their stage. You could get a booth.”
I said, “Here’s what I would do if it was me, and every one of the cases I mentioned except the continuing education.” I said, “What I would do is, I would get a booth. I would get an insurance writer for about $1,700, the last time I checked, and I would get a $1 million prize.” Have an insurance company write you $1 million prize if somebody can sink a 250-foot putt into a plastic cup from across the gymnasium or something like that. It’s some obstacle course where it’s almost physically impossible. It would be pure random chance, no skill. I would then reach out to the event coordinator and say, “I’d like to sponsor part of this event. If there’s a free little room, I could do a free talking. I also want you to know my booth is going to be the most packed booth in the whole event because everybody’s going to know that somebody could potentially win $1 million by putting a ball into a small cup.”
I said, “If history is correct, the event coordinator is going to find that appealing. They’ll even add that million-dollar prize into their mainstream marketing to get people to pay to come to the overall event.” You’re helping them out. They’re going to love you. I said, “Here’s the deal. If you want to sell stuff, you’ve got to do what Seth Godin has been writing about for many years. You’ve got to take your bait, which is you and your product. You’ve got to drop your bait into a pool of swimming hungry fish that have shown evidence of interest in your bait.” I’m going to slow this down a little bit. Number one, you find your avatar, your perfect client. Number two, you find out where groups of your perfect client hang out in mass. Number three, you find a way to get your product, your bait in front of that large group.
The final thing is, you need to find evidence of interest. I see many entrepreneurs. They dabble in the edges and the fringes. They go to this meetup, that meetup. They go to this leads group in the morning, but they’ve never done any homework to see if there’s evidence of interest in their product in the group before they go. These two gentlemen know that if they can get a booth at the Inc. 5,000 conference, and these are 2,500 to 5,000 business owners. We know business owners, entrepreneurs, executives wake up with two thoughts in their minds, “How do I make more money and how do I trim expenses?”
Get your message in front of evidence of interest, and you will see business grow. Click To TweetThere’s evidence of interest in both of these gentlemen’s products because both of their products are in the game of either increasing revenues and/or decreasing expenses. There’s proof or evidence of interest. I see many people that are marketing and walking through life, rub-a-dubbing their way through business thinking success is going to attack them. They’re talking around on maybe a country radio station with their advertisement like we did a couple of months ago. I’m thinking, “Wait a minute, there’s no evidence of interest in the country radio station for our product line.” I was wondering why there’s no traffic on our website. Instantly, I put it on a business talk radio and we had 4,000 hits to our website.
On the talk radio, it’s a business talk show where business people listen in. On country radio, everybody listens, not that business owners don’t. The point is, on country radio, I had no evidence of interest. Where on the business talk show, they had evidence. They could show me the demographics of the listener and I had evidence of interest. You’ve got to ask, if you’re going to sell stuff and you’re going to grow your business now, not in six months, all you have to do is follow a three-step formula. Number one, find your avatar. If you say, “El Mundo, the whole world buys my product.” No, it doesn’t work like that. Try again. I got that from Ed Vogel. The bottom line is everybody has an avatar. Every single industry has a group of people that hang out in a group setting. No matter what your client base is, everybody has a group that hangs out and you can find them and you can put yourself right in the middle of them. The bottom line is to get creative, whether it’s a booth or a sponsorship or a radio message, get your message in front of evidence of interest and you will see the business grow. I’m hoping this helps.
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