Why your ‘Spray and Pray’ tactic is not working for your business?

Have you ever come across an outstanding brand/business/product/service/personal brand/entrepreneur whose offering you absolutely love; not being clear on who they are talking to? Not knowing who specifically their product or service is for? I haven’t… ever! Why? Because, without a clearly defined, tightly woven target audience, how do you even know what they need? Who do you design for? What is your message to them? Where are they based? How do you address them? How do you solve their problems? And if you’re not doing all of this, then what exactly are you doing with your business? 🙂

Ok, I hear the voices in your head…

• What if my target market has to evolve? Overtime, as you gain experience and insights you will either refine or sometimes even pivot your target audience based on market dynamics which is great.
• My offering is so good; everybody should love it. That’s the costliest spray and pray tactic I see people making. Oh it’s for everyone. When it’s for everyone, it’s actually for no one. You’re generic, ambiguous, nobody understands what you offer and for sure nobody buys it.
• I know my offering well, just need to find the right people who need it. No! You always start the other way around, first identify the right people who have the need and then shape your offering in a relevant way that meets those needs.
• What if my consumer is no longer receptive? I’d ask, are you talking to the right person?

So, how do you go about it? Let’s say you’re a solopreneur/consultant and want to build your business around your personal brand, some thought starters for you below:

• Who has the most pressing need of what you could potentially offer? (key is to initially be fluid across both, target market as well as offering until you get it right)
• What does that pressing need look like? Will they be actually spending money on your service or only like your post on social media?
• Select 2-3 sub groups, clearly differentiated, within the above identified segments and then get to know them REALLY well. Speak to them, spend the whole day with them, cultivate relationships, know their interests, motivations, habits, pain points, prior experiences, consumption patterns, et all.
• Build a crisp MVP for each of these segments and present it to them for feedback. Define and refine it until you hit the nail on the head.
• In parallel, think of who are the clients you love working with and why? What about them stands out?
• Who are the people who can influence the people who will pay you? Who are the credible thought leaders within the same niche as yours?
• Who are your supporters who have your back? Who can root for you and spread the word to the right audience identified above?
• Be open and receptive, more often than not, it is an iterative process. You cannot be in the planning phase forever; you need to decide when you’re clear enough to proceed yet open enough to incorporate changes along the way.
• If you decide to experiment and learn without having an explicitly articulated target audience, do so as a soft launch rather than shouting big and bold with your online campaigns. Why, you ask? Because, anything that goes out there establishes you in the mind of your audience as a brand! So if you can’t give your target audience a specific persona, they will – and you might not like it 🙂

Let’s take my example. Four years ago when I launched my business, for my B2C vertical, I defined my target audience as millennials (22-38 year olds) globally, who are driven, ambitious and looking for clarity on their career paths. Good to start with, arguably still quite broad. Today, I work with millennials (specifically 27- 38 years old, 80% regional) who are stuck at a career crossroads, not knowing where to go from there. They want help with defining a meaningful career path and packaging their skills and talents to be able to land the right opportunities or grow their business. Let’s put it to the test: It is specific, need based, sizable, measurable, sufficient and I have a right to win within this segment. Ticks all the boxes.

By the end of this exercise you should have mapped out your audience persona – geographically, demographically, behaviorally and psycho-graphically. Define it in a way that you exactly know their pain points and have a right to win with your proposition. A crisp target audience orchestrates all the other elements of your business plan. It flows into your strategic priorities, product design, value proposition, marketing and sales strategies, revenue streams, literally everything. You simply cannot afford getting this one wrong. It is literally as foundational to your business as Zoom is for the pandemic 🙂

About the Author:

Samia enables young people stuck at a crossroads to redefine their careers and re-write their narrative. She’s the founder of Unwind the Grind, a career and leadership development platform for millennials. She’s an ICF certified, strengths based career coach, NLP Practitioner, based in Dubai. She spent a decade at Procter & Gamble growing their billion dollar brands before transitioning into people development four years ago. With 13 years of well-rounded business management and coaching expertise and 500+ hours of experience; Samia knows what it takes for Gen Y to succeed in their careers.