Determining the Core Desires of your Target Audience
Following up on my recent post, Writing Content for a Website, I was watching a video by Charles Kirkland this weekend on Core Desires of Your Target Audiences. The training was for targeting audiences with paid advertising, but I think it’s important to consider when writing website content for specific personas AND how much you can charge with the right positioning.
Read the classic book: Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries & Jack Trout
Charles calls it the C4 Strategy. Read on to learn how to avoid commodity products and pricing for a stronger brand and revenues.
The first example Charles used was in the ‘lose weight’ niche and he identified that as the broad category that almost everyone was targeting – of interest to many, but not a passion. On the surface level, they are saying, “I’d like to lose weight.”
There are two things wrong with that…
A) Everyone is targeting it, so competition is high.
B) There may be a more powerful passion, desire or outcome with lower competition and higher perceived value that you can target.
Take it a step further and you might find your prospect saying…”I’d like to be healthier.” Most advertisers will target those top 2 core desires. Charles says that it’s usually the 4th level where you get the best return, hence the “C4 Strategy.”
The third core desire of people in the ‘lose weight’ niche are those who want to “Feel better and have more energy.” It’s more specific, but maybe not a passion.
Deep down, the biggest core desire is to feel sexy. She doesn’t want to turn the lights down before her husband comes to bed. She wants to feel sexy and desirable. Losing weight, being healthier, feeling better and having more energy all matter, but most people perceive being sexier as as a much bigger core goal or desire.
Targeting the key passion is worth more money. People will pay more for your solution.
And fewer people are going to compete with you.
This isn’t really new. For years, we’ve asked clients who their target personas are and what solutions they are looking for. Going beyond ‘solutions’ to gain insights on ‘core desires’ adds gasoline to the fire!
How Do You Unlock “That One Thing?”
His next example was ‘online marketing services.’
People hire digital marketers (like me) to help build their business online. Very often, they think simply getting traffic to their website is the answer, and I agree that it is one of the biggest success keys. Converting traffic to buyers is the other key to website success.
4) Traffic for your business
3) Grow your business
2) Create wealth
$) Safety & Reduced Stress
He shared another example in the ‘male fitness’ niche, with the same conclusion…
4) Build muscle. Getting pumped is promoted by many people. (It is fairly broad.)
3) Fitness & strength. (getting closer)
2) Respect. (Men in the build muscle/fitness niche have apparently been shown to want “respect.”)
$) Sexy. As above, they want to walk into the bedroom with their shirt off and feel great about it and what it means more than simply building muscle.
When you think about and research the core desires of your target audience, it often comes down to respect, position and prominence.
Earning 6 Figures Teaching People to Hand-Letter
I know of a guy who makes a significant living creating hand-lettered artwork and logos. Surprised? I was. Certainly not a starving artist! He has clients all over the world who gladly pay $8,000 for a logo.
He created a course to teach people how to learn hand-lettering. He broke $100,000 in sales in 3 days and went on to sell $177,000+ of paid and Master Classes. His initial course had 10 modules and 50 lessons.
In his niche, he says the average cost of a class is $19. He claims to have earned 36x that amount, which would be $684 on average per student. He sells the course for $697.
His broadest core desire is ‘people who want to learn how to letter.‘ (Those willing to pay 19 bucks) To sell a much bigger package he offered additional training on how to create a business doing what you love – hand-lettering – a passion many of his followers apparently had.
There was other bonus training beyond learning how to letter by hand as a living, but the lesson here is to add value above the core offering.
He also suggests adding bonus value above the perceived value. He suggests 10-20x. You’ll get more takers, better reviews and more referrals from Word Of Mouth Advertising.
Conclusion
Understanding your core desires of your target audience helps you create content that converts, sometimes amazingly well. Catering to those specific needs often supports higher ticket sales.
