Audience

knowing who you're trying to reach.

How Marketing Funnels work

The Flywheel Model

Niche Marketing

Target Audience + ICP

Buyer Persona

Marketing Funnels

The concept of a “funnel” is often used in marketing and sales to describe various stages of the customer journey regarding typical patterns of consumer behaviour.

Generally, the proportions of each audience group get smaller as you move “down the funnel.”

Brand awareness, recognition, and recall are often used to measure an audience’s knowledge of brands and companies.

Do you know any other model?

Terminology: Sales and marketing

Lead magnet: Content is given away for free in exchange for a potential customer’s email address. The key to creating valuable lead magnets is to understand what your customer values and create content they desire.

Nurture: A concept that describes how companies move prospective customers through the funnel stages, often phrased as “lead nurturing.”

Remarketing: A method of paid digital marketing that is used to target website visitors who have visited a website. These ads are often used in social media.

Segmentation: A term to describe breaking down target audiences into smaller subsets with common characteristics. Specific marketing strategies are often applied to segments.

The language of sales

Traffic: The amount of data sent and received by visitors to a website.
Leads: An individual or organization interested in what you’re selling.
Prospects: A potential customer that has been qualified, fitting specific criteria.
Conversion: An action that occurs when a visitor to your website completes a goal (purchase, download, fill in a form, subscribe)

Awareness

Attract your target audience’s attention through various channels such as social media, content marketing, SEO, and advertising.
Create valuable and engaging content that addresses your audience’s pain points and interests.
Use eye-catching visuals and compelling headlines to capture attention.

Interest

Once you’ve attracted attention, provide more in-depth content like blog posts, videos, webinars, and ebooks to engage your audience further.
Highlight the benefits and solutions your products or services offer.
Encourage interaction, such as likes, shares, comments, and sign-ups for newsletters.

Consideration

Present more detailed information about your offerings, including features, specifications, and case studies.
Provide social proof, like customer reviews, testimonials, and success stories.
Offer comparison guides to showcase how your products or services outperform competitors.

Conversion

Make the purchasing process easy and streamlined.
Provide multiple payment options and a secure checkout process.
Consider offering upsells or cross-sells that complement the customer’s selected product.

Utilizing marketing funnels is a fundamental strategy for guiding potential customers through the stages of the buying process

From awareness to purchase. A marketing funnel consists of several stages: Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Intent, Evaluation, and Purchase. Here's how to effectively use marketing funnels:

What after Conversion?

NICHE MARKETING

“Don’t find customers for your products. Find products for your customers”

— SETH GODIN —

Niche Marketing

Your Audience

Niche marketing is a strategy that focuses on a very specific target market

Instead of marketing to everyone, it focuses on one specific segment within a larger target market

Brands can build authority and develop deeper, more meaningful marketing messages that resonate with a distinct set of customers

It sends a signal to your ideal customer that you understand them and that you can help

What is your niche, and why?

How to find your Niche

Find a need

Your Passion

Your Skills

Your Audience

Personal and Professional

Personal

Creative Skills
Cooking
Talking to people
Reading
Dancing
Planning
Organizing
Playing

Professional

Communication
Writing
Listening
Problem Solving
Time Management
Managing Projects
PR

Niche marketing is a concept marketers use to help them get very specific about their ideal customer and the topic the ideal customer is interested in.

At first, it might seem like this alienates a broader audience, but it allows your ideal customer to relate to your content in a very specific way, builds a bond, and increases your chance of building loyal fans who will keep coming back.

Watch this video to help explain the concept of niche marketing. Once you’ve watched the video, think about what topics you’re interested in and the skills you bring to that topic.

How to pick a niche market

Once you’ve thought about your blog topic, it can be difficult to figure out where to start.

• Research helps you define a niche based on topics you know people are searching for, so it connects with an immediate need in the marketplace and gives you a direction to start.

• Research is one of the most important skills you can develop as a digital marketer; it applies to everything!

• This gives you an advantage over other people creating content about the same topic.

Tools to find out what people are talking about

Researching your niche: Conduct online research to find out what questions people are asking related to the topic you’re interested in.

Google predictive search

The items auto-listed under the search term are generated based on common search queries.
“People also ask” gives you more information about common questions people search for.

Google Trends

Quora

Description text (people or companies) can provide answers.
Follow topics you’re interested in.
Popularity of topics and questions is indicated through “upvotes” and shares.
The more “upvotes” a question receives, the more popular the question.

Set up an account on www.quora.com

Answer the public

This tool generates common questions people search for.
You enter a topic, and then it generates a result.
The free version only allows three searches per day.

Do you know any other tools?

Target audience + ICP

ideal customer profile (ICP) and Buyer Persona

•Personas are a tool that brings your ideal customer to life.

•It guides the direction of your marketing and messaging.

•They are sometimes referred to as buyer personas or customer avatars.

Buyer personas provide a clear, humanized picture of the target audience, enabling more:

- Effective content creation
- Segmentation
- Personalization
- Product development
- Improved marketing strategies

They ultimately lead to better customer acquisition, retention, and business growth.

Why personas are a useful tool?

•Most people think their ideal customers are like them, but that’s not usually true.

• It helps you see your content marketing in a new way by thinking objectively about your messaging and how it resonates with your target audience.

•It helps you see your target audience as a real person.

Personas

ICP vs Buyer Persona

Considerations within an organization

•Personas create a shared vision and purpose across the organization.

•It involves getting input and agreement from stakeholders and leaders.

•Personas depersonalize and diffuse arguments based on personal opinions because they make people think objectively and make better decisions that support their target customers.

•Most companies have 3-5 target personas for their major customer segments.

Problem statement

•Personas are a tool that brings your ideal customer to life.

•It guides the direction of your marketing and messaging.

•They are sometimes referred to as buyer personas or customer avatars.

Could you think about one persona for your brand?

Buyer persona

Jane Johnson

Age:

Location:

Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Who is Jane?

Jane is a busy mom of 2 young boys, Alex, 7, and Aidan, 10. She recently opened a new store in Winnipeg’s exchange district, FOX + FEATHER, a curated collection of Canadian-made clothes from designers using sustainable fashion practices. Most of her clients are men and women age 35-45.

She has hired a small staff of 3 employees who help her keep the shop open. She has taken some training at Women’s Enterprise Centre and is getting ready to expand to a new location in St. Boniface. She’s starting to realize that she can’t do everything and is interested in looking for help, especially with online marketing. She stays in touch with her friends and family on Facebook and Instagram, believes in shopping locally instead of shopping online, and does occasionally indulge in dinners ordered in from Skip the Dishes.

Jane has worked hard for her business, and raising her kids is essential, so she makes time for her family. She makes a point of being home for dinner every night and being involved in parent council. Her boys are active in karate and soccer. She’s been married to her husband, George, for 12 years. Jane has a few close friends she gets together with a couple of times a month.

Her days are rushed. She gets up at 5:30am to catch up on email and get in a quick workout before heading to the store to check on stock and deliveries, check in with her staff and open the doors at 9:30am.

PROBLEM STATEMENT:

“I’m overwhelmed with running my business. I’ve tried some online marketing, but it hasn’t brought more people into the store. I want to try something new but don’t have a big budget.”

Reflection:

• Where would Jane look for information to solve her problem?

• What online marketing topics might be relevant for her?

• What kind of messaging would Jane find helpful?

• What values would align if she was to hire someone to help with her marketing?

What topics might be relevant for her?
Where would Rosa look for information to solve her problem?
What kind of messaging would Rosa find helpful?
What values are important to Rosa?

Researching your persona

•It’s vital that a persona is based on research.

•Use a combination of internal and external research to create your persona.

•Internal research inside your company means tapping into knowledge and information in other departments, usually customer service, training, sales or IT.

•External research gives you access to broader consumer trends and behaviours that affect companies in today’s marketplace.

Personas build connections

•Personas create a connection between your niche and your target customer because they see themselves in your marketing.

•Every content you write should focus on helping this person.

•Personas build loyal fans faster than generic marketing messages.

Class Exercise:

What could the target market, target audience, and buyer persona be for the following industries:

Brewery.

Car Dealership.

Local Craft Store.