When launching a business, most entrepreneurs initially focus solely on their product and getting it out to their buyers. While profitable in the beginning, this isn’t the only way you can go about launching a business. Rather than giving your attention to your product, you can instead start with your audience and build a relationship with them first.
1. Choose an audience
The first obvious step in this process is to choose an audience to target. Be methodical in this decision– don’t just throw darts and expect to hit something. Pick an audience that identifies with the values you do and is passionate about the same things. Your audience will be able to tell how genuine you feel about certain topics. By choosing an audience that shares your passions, you’ll never have to fake interest in a topic and dissuade them from reading more. Also be sure to make your target audience as specific as possible to narrow down your competitors in the space.
2. Understand your audience
Now that you’ve chosen an audience, the next step is to really understand your audience. After all, you can’t begin to create content until you know exactly what your target customers are looking for. To understand your audience, try to get a sense of who they are by identifying key demographics of your ideal member. Then move on to thinking more about what your audience believes in and what problems they may be having. This part is key to the future success of your content, as you will write content that focuses on solving these key problems.
3. Start targeting your audience
Now the fun part! This is the portion where you start to reach out to your audience, garnering their attention. Many marketers believe that in this stage they should start writing blog posts and hope that their target readers will begin to engage with them. Rather than focusing on a blog without any readers, you can begin to target your audience directly. The cheapest way to do this is by guest posting on other blogs that are popular within your niche. Write about your unique position in this space and provide a lead at the end that will attract those readers to your site.
4. Continue to grow
Once you build your initial audience, the next logical step is to continue to grow that audience. Now that you have a solid foundation of readers for your content, you need to continue to create more content on a consistent basis. To keep track of all of this, start by creating a content schedule. For each month, plan out the days you are going to post content and what each piece of content is going to be about. You don’t want to continuously write about the same thing, so be sure to brainstorm content ideas before creating your schedule.
While many companies choose to start with their product when launching a business, the idea of focusing on your audience first means that you can begin to develop long-lasting relationships earlier. These relationships will generate more leads for your new venture and lead to loyal customers that will become advocates for your brand.