Identify Your Target Audience: More on Hero Building

I wanted to dig in a little more on Hero Building and identifying your hero.

You identify your target audience with every piece of marketing content you publish for your business. If we aren’t intentional about choosing our target audience, we can get into the habit of imagining ourselves as the audience, using branded buzzwords we think sum up our business. This is not effective because you need little convincing to buy your own product. The trick to content marketing is identifying people—who are not you—who would most likely need the services you promote. What type of person desires the outcomes your product or services provide? This question is where you start effectively identifying and understanding your target audience to better serve and engage the right people with your digital content.

Step 1: Defining the Hero

The buyer persona—as we all know—is a person or people you imagine talking to when writing web copy or social posts to promote your business. They are also an existing segment of your client base. At PIC, we marry storytelling to content marketing by taking a deep dive into understanding our client’s buyer personas. This dive is so deep and personalized that we champion these personas and turn them into the Hero of their own Buyer Journey.

With most stories, the journey can lead to a happy ending, a cliff hanger, or to tragedy. This is the outcome of the hero’s journey, and your marketing efforts can influence the path. If discovering your product is part of the journey, the happily ever-after occurs when the hero chooses a path to a successful outcome, hopefully, that means with your help.

Just like an author would build the backstory of a fictional character, marketers stand a better chance at developing the right content at the right time for the right prospect if they put in the work to better understand the person’s desired outcomes and how the marketer can maximize value on the customer’s journey to that outcome.?

Understanding the Hero’s Context

Most of us can easily answer, “What type of person has the problem we solve with our products or services?” Consider the type of buyer who already values your business and experiences the least amount of friction through your buying process: your most positive-experienced, maybe even (but not necessarily) full-price customers from the last two or three years. Note the demographics most common among your pool of customers. This exercise will help you focus on a person outside of yourself (no need to market to people already invested in the work) and build an ideal, fictional champion: a hero who must start their journey to reach the desired outcome, An outcome your business has the expertise in and an immense amount of value to offer the hero outside your products and services.??

With a visual idea of your hero, it’s time for the dive. You must “get to know” your hero. You may offer a solution that you think is designed to achieve a specific outcome, but depending on the perspective of the hero, it's achieving another. For example, If you are an HVAC company, you might believe the outcome you are providing is a comfortable, healthy environment for your customers.? Maybe that is true for the homeowner.? The Landlord wants to be able to charge a bit more in rent.? The store owner wants to keep their customers in their store. ? The solution is the same for your company, but the motivations are different.? You would have a different story for each hero.? We’ve already started building the backstory for your hero with just one question: What is the desired outcome??

The collection of information about the hero we’re rooting for allows us to set them on the path to success, from discovery to desired outcome.

Identifying Hero’s Goals and Challenges

Your business solves problems on the road to an outcome., Regardless of who your hero is. Even luxury brands of everyday items solve a problem. For our hero, we must find out what outcome they want to achieve. What happily ever after ending do they want?Once we understand the desired outcome, we can start looking at the challenges our hero will face along the way.? There are typically two types of challenges: Hurdles and Roadblocks.? A hurdle slows down progress to our hero’s happily ever after but does not stop it. Its friction.? A roadblock on the other hand, will impede completion of the outcome until it's solved. Likely, hurdles and roadblocks make up a considerable portion of what your company solves for.?

Defining your hero’s goals and challenges can seem redundant. They have the problem; your business has the solution. The paths to achieving their desired outcomes are different.

Example of Hero’s Goals and Challenges

Omari, Isabella, and Chen are three heroes looking to contract a commercial painting company. Though they share the same goals, they have different needs based on their desired outcome. Omari needs his project to be completed as soon as possible. Isabella is opening a new business and needs a cost-effective solution. Chen is the curator for an important historical site and will spare no expense in obtaining the highest-quality, period-specific aesthetic of the building. Based on their desired outcomes, their choice of painting companies might be different. Omari might pay more for the rush job from the one company that could accommodate his timeline. Isabella might hire a friend to do the job as a favor. Chen will seek the best company to provide the specialized treatment her site requires.

Even with a shared goal, their desired outcomes ultimately influence their choice of business. Defining desired outcomes based on your business’s offerings can mean the difference between attracting Omari, Isabella, or Chen.

Step 2. Gathering Data on Your Hero

Building an ideal customer profile and turning them into a hero shouldn’t solely involve guesswork and common stereotypes. For an established business, your database of existing and repeat clients is a wealth of knowledge you must tap into. Aside from polling your employees and coworkers, your current clients are often extremely willing to provide feedback if the format is easy. Motivating them with incentives can get you even more targeted feedback.

Primary Research Techniques

If you are a small business, you might think of a few specific clients you know who would happily offer you direct feedback. You should absolutely ask these folks what they think and how you can do things better. Interview them based on what you already know about their personal buying journey with your company. Start with questions about how they discovered their initial problem. How did they find you? What was their first impression? Did they consider other options before settling on yours? Just like in a job interview, avoid questions with simple yes/no answers. The more they can share about their specific experience, the better.

But what about the customers you don’t know so well? Surveys are less personal than interviewing a familiar client. Many people prefer this approach when they must give constructive (Read: potentially negative) feedback. Not that you shouldn’t trust the praise from those you know, but using a couple of tools with different levels of experience can result in a more honest, well-rounded depiction of your hero’s experiences. Again, these questions must be specific and unbiased to the positive or negative. You can ask, “What do you love most about your experience?” but you must also ask, “What have you found to be the most challenging part of your experience?”

Getting customers to take part in a survey or interview isn’t always easy, and harder when you ask questions requiring their detailed experience. To get more participation, consider offering an incentive for those who not only complete the survey, but provide details with their answers. Make sure the incentive is desirable enough to motivate your clients. Enter those who thoroughly complete your survey into a drawing for a high-dollar incentive versus a standard, low-impact discount for each entry.

Social Listening Tools

Your hero already exists in the world, and they are talking all over social media about their challenges and experiences—good and bad—that mold their decision-making process. Monitor social media and online forums to tap into ongoing conversations with your ideal customers. This real-time data can reveal immediate needs and trending topics among your audience.

The lowest hanging fruits for social listening are product or service reviews for yourself and your competition. Read widely, not just the most critical reviews. Often the middle-of-the-road reviews about existing tools and solutions will reveal hints about variance in outcomes and how the business could have made the 1-2 additional star difference.

Step 3. Analyzing the Data

You do not have to be a statistician to find the gold hidden in the information you’ve collected. Because you developed your persona based on real customer data, you can be confident your hero aligns with actual behaviors and preferences. Organizing information is key to making the numbers and data develop from raw information into a carefully crafted path. Then tailor your messaging, product offerings, and customer experience to meet the needs and desires of your hero personas.

Creating Audience Personas

Based on the common data points of your most ideal clients, develop a character worksheet that highlights key information. Segment your audience into personas based on shared characteristics and needs. These personas help you visualize your audience as distinct groups with specific content and product preferences.

Narrow your personas down to three and see if you can further identify your hero by applying the example above to your industry and specific offering. They might all require the same outcome, but which is the easiest to sell based on how they need to reach the outcome?

Step 4. Applying Your Insights

Your hero must begin their journey. Your job is now to guide them down the path, breaking down barriers which could prevent the hero from reaching their desired outcome.

Tailoring Content to Meet Hero’s Needs

Customize your content to address specific hurdles, roadblocks, and aspirations identified in your research. For example, if your heroes are entrepreneurs, offer concise, actionable advice that fits their busy schedules. Place the content where you already know they will see it, such as LinkedIn or on your website, optimized for search engines to increase the odds of your hero seeing the information.

Content Mapping to the Hero’s Journey

Align every piece of content with the various stages of your audience’s decision-making process: awareness, consideration, and decision. Each stage should address different aspects of their journey and guide them to the next step.

The standard for PIC’s Hero Mission Strategy builds content around 5 to 6 chapters on a hero’s mission or desired outcome. These chapters organize your business’s key solutions into content focused on specific outcomes for your hero.

Conclusion

Viewing your audience as a hero in their own narrative is more than a marketing strategy; it’s a growth mindset that will help you add value to your ideal client’s path to choosing your solution.

By continually refining your understanding of your audience and adjusting your content, you create not just consumers but champions and participants in your brand’s story.