The web is crowded and filled with distractions. A successful business finds ways to break through the clutter and deliver compelling messages to the people most likely to act upon them.
But how well can you articulate who your target audience is?
“Whole Foods is actually a psychographic, not a demographic,” said Paul Rossi, The Economist’s managing director and executive vice president for the Americas. “One of the things people say is, ‘You go after an affluent audience.’ But we don’t define our audience by their demographic. We define our audience based on what they think.”
That’s a bold move — and, at least for now, one that’s paying off on The Economist’s bottom line. But, to do this, a company must understand what its core audience thinks, wants and needs, and be able to deliver those solutions in a manner that resonates.
If you can do that… why stop there?
How Creative Concepts Helps Its Clients Expand Their Core Audience
When a client asks us to help them deliver a message, they often already know what they want to say and to whom they’d like to say it. What they initially expect us to do is help them find that audience online. And we do.
But we also help them tailor their original message to the tastes of multiple audiences, each of which combines to form different aspects of their extended customer base.
For example, Ecover is a multinational company that manufactures sustainable cleaning products. Their obvious core audience is “green” moms in search of healthier alternatives to chemical cleaners.
But the list of customers who are, could, or should be motivated by Ecover’s solutions is much broader, including:
Journalists
Scientists
Teachers
Fathers
Kids
Grandparents
Gardeners
Cleaning staffs
Corporate buyers
… and so on.
Likewise, tea might not seem like an obvious conversational topic for sports fans, traveling salesmen or history buffs, but our work with Bigelow Tea has helped expand brand awareness among these unlikely audiences.
And while Ouidad may be the “Queen of Curl,” the interested audience for her products extends far beyond the walls of her New York City salon. As we helped Ouidad track inbound web traffic and blog comments, we found passionate customers from around the world — many of whom speak Spanish or Portuguese. This prompted us to begin translating Ouidad’s content, in order to better serve her growing multilingual audience.
Understanding your core audience is a key to driving your business forward. But finding different ways to deliver one message to multiple audiences is one way Creative Concepts helps our clients expand beyond their core customers.
Social media is about people. Companies are about profit. Finding ways to bridge that gap can sometimes seem tricky.
But there’s one commonality that’s always worth discussing: charity.
Most companies have at least one charitable cause that they feel passionate about, usually for personal reasons. And whenever your company invests their time and effort in a cause other than direct profit, that’s a potential feel-good story that your employees and your customers can get behind.
Ouidad and her family have been personally affected by breast cancer. In response, Ouidad founded her own charity to help raise funds for cancer research.
Why do we mention our clients’ non-profit endeavors?
Because they’re the kinds of stories that remind customers how the products they purchase are, ultimately, created by human beings. These are the conversations that help the people on both sides of the storefront find a common ground, and remove the barriers that make us think of all businesses as impersonal moneymaking machines.
Ultimately, social media and business are about people.
Your company is people.
Don’t forget to remind your customers — and yourselves.
Want to connect with us more personally? Follow us on Twitter or Facebook!
When our client Ouidad first launched their blog, they — and we — thought we knew exactly whom its readership would be: smart, savvy women who take great care of their curls and feel passionate about looking good.
It turns out we were half-right.
Yes, the blog attracted exactly the kind of readers we anticipated. But it also attracted a number of readers we didn’t expect, including teens, men and moms on the go. It also appealed to non-English-speaking readers in search of curly-haired tips, and African-American readers interested in more reliable hair care solutions.
So we adapted.
We helped Ouidad create new blog posts on the subjects their readers asked the most questions about. We broadened the blog’s focus to include tips for men, teens and kids (or, more specifically, their moms). And we now regularly include posts written in (or translated into) Spanish, to better accommodate Ouidad’s multilingual audience.
Our lesson?
Good companies support the customers they already know they have; great companies find ways to accommodate the customers they never knew existed.
Do you know who your customers are?
(Are you sure?)
What’s your favorite way to “discover” new customers? Tell us on Twitter.
We were flattered to see our client, Bigelow Tea, mentioned in Stephanie Schwab’s recent post on how to schedule blog content. She cites the Bigelow Tea blog’s occasional use of celebrity-driven tea stories, correctly surmising that celebrities + tea + health benefits = quick and easy ‘feel-good’ reads that have built-in SEO juice.
If you want to grow your company’s blog but you’re stuck for inspiration or overwhelmed by time constraints, here are some additional tips we at Creative Concepts frequently apply to our clients’ blogs:
Know (and write for) your audience(s). Odds are, your brand appeals to more than just one type of customer. Identify the various audience segments who might find value in your blog posts. Then, ensure that each of your posts appeals directly to at least one of those segments — science, sales, history, culture, celebrity, how-to, etc.
Holidays are your friends. It seems like every day in America is National Something-or-Other Day, or World Whatchamacallit Week. In what ways can your brand connect with each of these opportunities? Writing about Bigelow Tea during National Iced Tea Month is obvious; writing about them during American Heart Month is an opportunity to connect with health-conscious readers.
Surveys provide a one-two punch. Not only do they offer a chance for your readers to weigh in on a topic, but their answers can help you better understand what they’re most interested in. For example, when our client Ouidad asked readers what their favorite Ouidad product was, their responses indicated that one of their products was a hands-down winner. That feedback gave us an opportunity to help Ouidad create more content that showcases their top products, and to highlight those products whose benefits may not be as well-known.
Find the best in-house writers. Some of the best voices for the Ouidad blog are the stylists at the Ouidad salons, who can speak firsthand about their experiences behind the chair. And if someone has a great story but they’re not writers by nature, you can always interview them and then publish their story as a Q&A.
Of course, even the best content can’t find readers if it’s buried deep in a stack of “to-do list” items. By sticking to an achievable blog management schedule, you’ll ensure those posts get written, published and read in a reliable fashion.
A few weeks ago, we noticed that someone was live-tweeting during her hair appointment at Ouidad, a New York-based salon that caters to curly hair. (Ouidad is also our client.)
The tweeter in question was glowyjoeybunny, AKA Joey Alycia, who had answered Ouidad’s open call for hair models. In addition to being a curly girl, Joey is also a technophile. She blogs at Pink Sith, alongside her blog partner & site founder, Elvira.
Impressed by Joey’s social media savvy, we asked her a few questions about Twitter, blogging and the way she interacts with businesses on Twitter. Here’s what she had to say.
CC: How does your live experience change when you’re tweeting during an event (like your Ouidad visit)?
JA: I’ve found that when I’m live tweeting during an event, I’m more attentive to the details of the event. This sounds counterintuitive, because one would assume that if I’m staring at my Blackberry and tweeting, I’m not paying attention – that simply is not true. I become more attuned to details I feel my followers on Twitter would be interested in.
Also, from a marketing standpoint, I focus more on what is good and what isn’t good about the experience as a whole, because I am a fan of promoting businesses for good practices / criticizing businesses for bad practices.
For example, during my Ouidad visit I was tweeting about how pleasant the music was, and taking pictures of how nice the salon looked, etc. Had I not been on Twitter, I would have just been sitting there reading a magazine while my hair was being cut. I would have been more worried about killing time and being bored than about what was actually going on.
CC: What types of experiences or insights prompt you to tweet about them?
JA: I will tweet about experiences that are really interesting and beneficial that I feel deserve to be mentioned, and I will tweet about experiences that are more negative and I feel deserve criticism.
For example, I was at a press event this past week where I could tell they had not planned for a large crowd because they did not have enough gift bags for the attendees. I felt that if they wanted a positive review of the night and of the products being promoted that night, they should have had enough materials to provide to everyone. I tweeted about that and received a very prompt and apologetic message from the event planners.
CC: You obviously enjoyed your Ouidad experience. How did sharing it with your readers enrich the event?
JA: I absolutely loved my Ouidad experience! I wanted to share it with my readers and my Tweeps (my followers) because I know that many people are hesitant to be a hair model because they fear that their hair would be ruined. I wanted to promote the salon because I had such a wonderful time there, and I wanted to let other women know that being a hair model is a great experience.
Tweeting and blogging about the experience allowed me to focus on the details of my experience, and really allowed me to fully enjoy the luxurious (and free!) treatment I was receiving. Like I said, had I not gone to the session knowing I was going to write about it, I would not have paid an ounce of attention to what was going on.
CC: Do companies often contact you based on your positive (or negative) online comments about their brands?
JA: Yes, companies often do contact either me or my partner on the blog about our reviews. We appreciate having our efforts acknowledged, and we are also more loyal to companies who thank us for our reviews. It feels good to know our hard work is being recognized!
CC: Which kind of feedback do you find more valuable: @ replies on Twitter or blog comments?
JA: I find both types of feedback more valuable. I appreciate @ replies from companies, especially. Companies tend to not comment on the blog as much as regular consumers / blog followers do. I love blog comments from other women because they usually offer suggestions about products to review or application tips, which I love reading and find to be very helpful.
So… What’s the lesson here?
Brands: encourage your customers to talk, tweet and blog honestly about you.
If they love what you’re doing, they’ll share that love with their own audiences (creating new potential customers in the process). And if they have a complaint, addressing it directly helps you simultaneously improve your business while demonstrating your respect for your customers firsthand.
Cancer can be terrifying, especially to those of us who’ve never had it. A loved one’s diagnosis can seem like a death sentence. The future suddenly feels finite, and our formerly limitless possibilities now appear inconsequential in the cold, clinical light of science.
But the most amazing thing about cancer is the way some people not only overcome it, but convert their experience with cancer into a lens through which they can more clearly see — and more fully enjoy — the world they’ve now more fully come to appreciate.
Two of our clients have just such stories, and since cancer is a condition that extends beyond the constraints of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, we thought we’d share them with you now.
“I can say with total certainty that this is a disease that I am living with NOT dying from.”
Likewise, Ouidad is another successful businesswoman. Her eponymous New York salon just celebrated its 25th anniversary. But along the way, Ouidad had to overcome more than just the fashion industry’s skepticism about a self-made “curl professional” — she had to overcome breast cancer. And she did. Now she and her husband Peter oversee Curls for a Cure, which works year-round to raise money for breast cancer research.
These remarkable women are only two of the millions who’ve refused to allow their cancer to define them, and who have emerged from their medical challenges with their energies renewed and their focuses sharpened. We hope their stories serve as inspiration for you, no matter the hills or mountains in your path, and as a reminder that there is a life to be lived passionately on the other side.
One of our clients, Ouidad, has ventured into the world of web video with a trio of hair care tips for the terminally curly. Each video has a different focus — beauty & empowerment, hair care on the go and 4-minute curls — which means each video also (presumably) has a different audience, despite the fact that they’re all coming from the same source.
Since Ouidad and her daughter, Sondriel, are so comfortable being themselves and sharing their insights with the camera, we knew they’d represent their business better than any hired hosts possibly could. But they also realized that Sondriel’s expertise may sound more authentic to a teen or young adult audience than Ouidad’s would, because not every audience perceives “authority” the same way.
If you (or a client) are creating original media for the web, you need to be consistent in your branding, but don’t be slavishly insistent on a single point of view. Your audience is multifaceted; let your messaging be, too.
Well we are very excited about all the good stuff coming our/your way. As you probably know we have our Business Smart Tools conference coming up tomorrow, Tuesday May 5th. Speakers from Bigelow Tea, Pitney Bowes, Ford and PepsiCo will present, we will feature true social media experts and we will include breakout sessions on Twitter for Business, The Power of Video, Where do you begin Online and the ROI of Social Media (and a personal thank you to our great sponsors MarketWire, Everett Hall Associates, and CitySquares!) You can’t beat this event for social media education and excitement especially seeing that you get lunch and a great networking cocktail party thrown in! You can still register here.
We are also excited because we are right around the corner from launching our new website! Flash based sites were cool how long ago…we know…too long ago, and that’s why we are updating it to reflect who we are, a PR and Social Media consultancy with fluency in communication both online and off via blogs, social networks, video and more. Can’t wait!
And finally we are so excited about our new client Ouidad who are great people with a great product and service. As you can see from my photo, I have naturally curly hair and well my curls were cured when I found Ouidad. We have just launched their new blog so take a look and let us know what you think.
Well there will be more to report after the conference, after our new site goes live, after Ouidad has been up and running for a bit and after we announce or next newest client.
Stay Tuned!
Valorie
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