When you start looking into building a business one of the first things you’ll likely come across is:
Who is your target customer?
It’s one of the 5 P’s of marketing for any business, online or offline.
- People:ย Understand and engage with the target audience
- Product:ย Make sure the product meets the needs of the market
- Price:ย Be competitive and strategic
- Place:ย Make the product available where the target customers can find it most easily
- Promotion:ย Use the right channels to advertise the product
My problem with this list is that it seems to place equal weight on all the Ps.
While they are all important to a successful business and if one if off then it will affect the results, People is the most important in online business.
Because online business is so content marketing heavy, you need to be crystal clear on who your target customer is to stand a chance of reaching them.
The algorithm is the audience
If you want success in online business, you need to put your marketing content out there on the platforms. Whether your target customer sees your content or not is down to the almighty algorithms.
The algorithm is trying to give the users what they want.
Not what they need.
And there’s the kicker.
On social platforms you’re competing not just with people in your own niche, but everything. All the content on the platform.
Dog training videos, Bass guitar lessons, science video essays etc
If i’m casually browsing to relax, chances are I don’t want to click on an educational video about how to improve my life or run an online business.
So what can we do about it? We can take the Mary Poppins approach.
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
As a purpose driven creator you know that you can help people, but often what people need isn’t what they think they want.
To reach them, it all comes down to packaging.
If you’re in the casually browsing mindset, which of the two videos would you be most likely to click on?
How to Start an Online Business That Helps People: Step-by-Step Guide
Can You Build a Business That Changes Lives and Makes Money?
The first one is perfect if you’re in the “I want to learn how to build a business today” mindset. But less so if you’re casually browsing.
The second one might just be enough to tempt you because it sounds more exploratory and less like listening to a lecture.
Although you need to be careful that you don’t start taking this too far and put clickbaity sprinkles on top of all your content. And not just because it’s bad for the viewers. It’s bad for your business too.
Be careful of shallow content
If you dumb down all your content too much and serve too much sugar with your vegetables, then your content will come across as lacking value, substance and depth. This hurts your credibility in the long run.
How can you build yourself up to be an authority in your space if you never discuss things in depth?
Plus, you’ll attract an audience that’s only interested in shallow, quick win content. If you later want to sell them a course that can have a real impact on their lives, they won’t be interested.
Take YouTube shorts. They are fantastic if you want to build your subscriber count quickly, but viewers of shorts aren’t same audience as viewers of long form videos. These viewers are in the casual quick dopamine hit mindset.
Even with the links in shorts trying to get people to come over to your longer form, they don’t really work. Either they aren’t that kind of person in the first place, or they just aren’t in that headspace when they’re watching shorts.
Don’t get your friends to subscribe to your channel
When I started my music channel, I asked all my friends and family to subscribe and watch my videos.
I thought it would help get some early activity on my channel so my videos would be promoted to more people.
The problem was, my friends and family are not my target audience. Most of them don’t play instruments and even those that do, don’t necessarily want to watch my videos.
All this did was confuse the algorithm as to who my audience was.
Are they – New mums with babies? Nerds into D&D? AI app developers? Regular cruisers?
So when I published a video and it was shown to my audience, and no-one clicked on it, YouTube thinks it’s a bad video and doesn’t show it to anyone else.
And even if they did all click it and watch it to support me, the algorithm doesn’t know what type of person to show it to next. Because my audience is too fragmented.
So start where all the big YouTubers do.
0 subscribers.
It’s in YouTube’s best interest to find the right people for your videos. More views, more watch time, and more ad revenue for YouTube.
If you focus on making content to help your target person, their problems, fears and desires the algorithm will find them.