Put your finger on the 'trigger'...5 steps to engage your target audience with emotion based
Before I begin, let's agree on one thing: people are making buying decisions, 24/7/52/365. Thanks to the wave of digital innovation, every waking minute of every single day is the opportunity to reach your potential clients. Therefore; it's more important than ever to know your clients, their buying habits, and how best to reach them online. Here is a quick and easy method for doing just that!
Step 1. Who is your target audience?
Hopefully you know the answer to that, because it's not something I can tell you from this side of the screen. If you can't quickly identify your audience that's okay to. However, since I need to teach you something today or your going to "click on by", for the purpose of this blog let's say your a Dental Clinic. So I think it's safe to say that anyone with teeth is your target audience. Good work. On to step 2.
Step 2. Break your audience down into groups.
Alright, keep in mind that you are a dental clinic, and your target audience is anyone with teeth. How else can we break that group down? Well, we can break it down by age, gender, medical needs, problems, procedure etc. etc. I like to use a mind map for this process, and then rank them based on the number of individuals that might belong to each group. Now you're going to pick one of those groups and we will continue on. What's that? You picked the group with crooked teeth? Great minds think alike!
Step 3. Identify a Problem that your business will have a solution for.
This step is an easy one for this particular group because the answer is in the question. They have crooked teeth and they want that winning smile. So they need braces or a retainer to have them straightened. What a coincidence! Your a dental clinic with the exact solution to their problem!
Step 4. Identify a trigger relating to the Problem identified above.
This is where things can get a little tricky. For certain problems, a trigger may not be that easy to find. Sometimes the best people to ask are your existing clients, but depending on the personal nature of that problem, they may or may not be willing to share that information. A trigger, is something that grabs the attention of the reader because they can instantly relate to it. Using the crooked teeth analogy, let's put ourselves in their shoes. What is the one thing you would be concerned about in today's world if you had crooked teeth? I know what I would be worried about; pictures! Or more specifically, selfies! All their friends showing off their pearly whites and they are left the tight-lipped lacky. Now let's talk to your potential clients with crooked teeth about how you understand them and their crooked teeth problems. Let's ask them a question pertaining to the plight of crooked teeth that will leave them saying "hey, that dental clinic understands me." This trigger needs to be delivered with care and attention, as you don't want to offend your potential clients either.
Step 5. Build a single marketing campaign around that one trigger.
I find that all to often, businesses try to cover their bases with blanket Brand Advertising. Don't get me wrong, there is a time and a place for Brand Advertising. In this particular case however, we are trying to engage our audience by relating to their unique problems. We want to do this through tag lines that trigger emotion in our audience. That's why we focus on a niche market, with a single problem, and work on only one campaign at a time. These singular campaigns can be used over and over again, and you can also run more than one at a time.
Now that you have this simple and effective tool in your belt, it's time to put your thinking cap on and come up with unique and catchy tag lines that will highlight this trigger. Throw your tag line into the title of all your online marketing channels (facebook, google ads, your website), add a call to action, and your set!
BONUS One last little tip before you go: Try adding a person of contact to your ads. For example: "Call John at Smith dental to book your appointment today".
Happy Marketing!!
Lauren Jo
