04 - Know Your Audience - Mini Marketing June Edition with Abi Jacks

It's the June edition of the Mini Marketing series with Abi Jacks.

Today, Abi dives deep into one of the most crucial aspects of marketing—knowing your target audience. Understanding who you are speaking to is foundational, whether you’re engaging parents, participants, or partners within your children’s activity organisation. 

Abi discusses the importance of this and also provides a simple, interactive workshop using sticky notes to help you and your team visually map out key characteristics and preferences of your audience segments. 

From identifying challenges to understanding communication preferences, this exercise aims to equip you with the insights needed to tailor your marketing efforts effectively.

Stay tuned for more insightful episodes from Steps2Success, where we help you navigate the challenges of running a children's activity organisation with practical advice and expert insights.

Created with pride by LoveAdmin

Edited with finesse by Making Digital Real

Transcript

Abi Jacks 0: 0:00

03 Hey everybody, I'm Abi Jacks, director of marketing and growth at LoveAdmin, and you're listening to the mini marketing podcast, where I'll be taking you through the world of marketing for your children's activity organisation, with no buzzword bingo as a promise. 18 Welcome back to mini marketing. I hope you enjoyed the last episode on the three essential marketing pillars. If you haven't heard it, then check out our channel and add seven minutes to your listening experience. The way I'm structuring these episodes is that they build on one another. But you can also listen to them out of order without frying your brain too much. So today, I'm going to be talking about one of the most important, if not the most important parts of marketing, and that's knowing your target audience. 45 One of the reasons when marketers apply for jobs, if they get asked if they have lots of industry experience is because if you don't know your target audience inside out, your marketing is going to fall flat, which in itself confuses me, because if you're a decent marketer, your superpower is getting to know whichever target markets thrown at you.

Abi Jacks 1: 0:03

05 Case in point I've marketed for an Italian boiler manufacturer, where plumbers merchants are the most fun and love a Day at the Races, the global advertising company, there are huge nuances between an audience in the US, UK and Australia. Yet they speak the same language, right? And now I'm talking to sports clubs, activity providers and membership Hawks. And even within these, there are many, many key differences. Was I an expert in these industries before I worked with them? No. Did I have to master their language very quickly? Hell Yes. 39 Last month, I even had to learn in two days how to speak to a classroom of 10 year olds, when I did a careers talk at my son's school, probably the most terrifying presentation ever. But I did my research and prepped with my son as to what would keep them engaged and how to show them value that they could understand. FYI, handing out lollies at the end may be cheating. But it's a key way to remembering being remembered with a group of 10 year olds.

Abi Jacks 2: 0:05

06 The great thing about the sports and activity provider space is that you live your target audience day in day out. It's not the type of industry where you run your organisation from an office, you're at the coalface with your customers, and they have very happy to give their opinions on what they like and don't. 22 In fact, they can be very polarised as to the reactions and often in the same day. So you know, your target audience. Great. But do you really? Or do you know what people are sharing with you in that moment when they're dropping kids off or picking them up? And it might be a different parent on a different day of the week? 42 If I asked you to tell me who your target audience was? What would you say? And if you needed to give a member of your team an outline as to who your ideal target was? What would you say? There are some key things that you need to know about your target audience to get a really rounded view. 59 And they include these number one, what are their challenges and pain points in life? To? What do they really care about? Not just relating to when they're with you, but in general? Three? How do they like to communicate? For what and who are influencing their decisions and preferences? Five? How can and do you make their life easier and better? Six, what are their bugbears around the service that you provide? And seven? And then how would you group them? Last session, I had us mind mapping which is one of my favourite ways to get things out of my head.

Abi Jacks 3: 0:09

38 Today, I'm going to ask you to do the simplest workshop ever to help define your target audiences. Don't worry, this is a simple exercise, and just needs a load of sticky notes and other one of my faves pens, obviously, and either just yourself or a couple of teammates to help you out and give a different perspective. I personally find bribing people with pizza or brownies helps this happen.

Abi Jacks 4: 0:10

00 Plus people love getting involved in things like this and adding their viewpoints. It makes them feel heard and respected. So on top of each sticky, right, what you're looking to understand, I would suggest one challenges. Two, what do they care about? Three, how communicate for what slash who influences them. Five, how to make life better. 27 Six bugbears seven, anything else of note. Then stick these up around the room. Once you fed everyone pizza handout packets of stickies and pens and give people 15 minutes to write as many things as they can under each of the headings. But before this, you need to decide what customer groups you want to do them on. 49 For example, it could be parents, participants, friends, schools, volunteers, or you could split that by weather There are an existing or prospective clients, whether they attend frequently or ad hoc, whether they do multiple things with you or just one. I often find if I just start simple, once we begin the exercise, people start asking about what to do with variations that impact what they put on the sticky.

Abi Jacks 5: 0:13

16 For example, participants who attend a lot may care about developing their skills and being the best, but participants who just come once a week, do it for fun seeing friends, you then might be like, huh, I need to split my participants by competitive versus fun. 33 And then I probably need to split my parents the same, because fun parent cares about their friends and how happy fun participant is. But competitive parent cares about developing and how competitive participant is performing. 48 Try and have at least three groups of people you'd like to run this on, set a timer for 15 minutes, start with your first group. And when it rings, collect all the stickies from the wall. Please make sure you label which pile is which I've done this before, and it can get messy. And then stick them back up again and start with the next one.

Abi Jacks 6: 0:16

08 You might find that you do it once or disagree with each other and need some more time to remove any unconscious biases you may have applied. An example of unconscious bias might be basing the fact that all parents are rubbish with technology, because some of them are. But actually you don't hear from those parents who can make payments fine because it runs smoothly. 29 At the end, you'll have three sets of information about your three main customer groups, which you pop into a spreadsheet and all agree a representative of what you know and think. If you want to get really professional, you will then send the same questions out to your customers, prospects community, and you will get the answers from the horse's mouth as it were. There are plenty of low cost simple survey tools, you can use Survey Monkey, for example, drop a link in an email or on social and done. For participants that depends on their age.

Abi Jacks 7: 0:18

02 Younger kids may enjoy an activity in class where you ask and they simply raise their hands with their answers. Older kids might enjoy doing something with their peers, or ask them to fill in a form and drop it in at the end of the session in exchange for some merch or yummy treats. What matters is that you're asking people and not just making assumptions on their behalf, you may get some surprising answers that challenge how you've internally seen people will help you gain a much better understanding into behaviours. 30 And what you can do to better engage and improve the service you provide to them. It will certainly improve your marketing from the words you use to the value highlight to people and where and how you communicate with them. I've covered a lot today. So I'll give a summary to help recap. Number one, don't assume that you and your team know enough about your customers to really effectively market to them. 55 So number two, take the time to define who your key customer groups are. Number three, use the sticky workshop to gather what you know internally. Then for ask your customer groups themselves using surveys and class interaction.

Abi Jacks 8: 0:21

11 Five, put all this information into a single document as soon as you collect it. And then six, share it amongst the team and you use it. I really encourage you to try out some of the practical elements of these sessions, because they will set you up for every part of marketing you undertake later on. 30 I've been marketing for over half my life and I can tell you that these techniques are tried and tested. Subscribe to the step to success channel and next month, I'll take you through naming your brand. I'm just one of the experts dedicated to helping love admin customers achieve success. 47 If you're looking for a software provider that gives you more we'll help you grow. Visit loveadmin.com To book a demo call with one of our experts. I'll see you next time

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