Woo hoo! Thanks so much for joining me in this “Your Target Market’s Language” series. One of the important parts of business is ensuring you fully understand your readers so you can speak their language when interacting with them. When you do that, you show that you’re like them. You’re an expert in what they like, and you will begin to build trust with them.
Once you understand your readers’ language, you can:
- Craft Effective Headlines. The language your audience uses can be considered keywords. I’m not talking about using technical jargon, but rather how they think about—and discuss—a topic. Words they use to express themselves. Knowing this, you’ll be able to craft effective headlines that will grab your readers’ attention.
- Create Descriptive Titles. For our nonfiction authors, titles for blog posts, eBooks, reports, and articles need to be descriptive enough to grab your readers’ attention, but not in a way that “tricks” them into clicking. If you’re not fulfilling the promise you made with the title, the reader will be disappointed when they click through. For fiction authors, it means not giving a book a title that makes a reader think “paranormal” when the book is actually “science fiction.” You’re making a promise with your book’s title. Don’t break it.
- Tell More Compelling Stories. Knowing the language your readers use allows you to use that same language when relaying stories and can make them even more compelling. Understanding how your audience talks and how they use words to express their emotions will help you tell stories that they’ll understand and thus, build trust.
- Develop Better Solutions for Their Problems. Boiling down your readers’ problems and the way they express them will help you develop better solutions to the issues they face.
- Market to Your Ideal Reader More Efficiently. You’ll be able to create marketing materials that more efficiently speak to your audience. You’ll know the right words to use when you connect with them so that they put their trust in you to provide the solution.
- Connect to Your Audience on a Deeper Level. You’ll connect with your audience on a deeper level when you use their same language as you express your feelings, desires, hopes, and dreams.
- Increase Engagement and Make More Sales. When you discover the common language to use with your audience, you’ll also engage more, which means you’ll get more sales, too.
By taking the time to learn your readers’ language, you’ll also be able to efficiently get to know your audience, build trust, and develop a sense of community that will go the distance and build a more stable business.
Do You Know Who Your Target Audience Is?
The first step in knowing your readers’ language is to discover your target audience. Sounds hard, right? Thankfully, there are steps to help you get to know your core reader. One thing to keep in mind… you shouldn’t do market research once and call it a day. Your audience demographics can stay the same for a hundred years, but your target market changes in terms of language, problems, morals, and values over that time. Constantly study!
Some of your audience identification will start with an educated guess. If you’re not selling any books yet, you’ll have to guess. If you already are selling books, you can look at your stats to discover the type of people buying them. Otherwise, follow these steps to identify your audience.
- Create a Customer Avatar. Define the likely gender, income level, location and any other characteristics that you can imagine that might define your ideal reader. Do they have children? Are they married or single? Do they have any pets? Do they share hobbies and interests? You want a specific picture of your ideal customer so you can start researching where to find those people.
- Research Your Audience. Once you define your customer avatar, you can then research your audience and make sure they’re the right one for you. Google and Facebook is your friend here.
- Join Your Audience Where They Are. While conducting research, you’ll find where your audience hangs out online. Joining them in their groups lets you learn about them through observation, but you can also participate in the discussions and learn in that way, too.
- Research Your Competition. Another way to discover your audience is to find your competitors and observe them. Register for their email lists, buy a book from them and join the groups they are in so you can see how they engage with their audience.
Bottom line, your audience is who you want them to be. Create the outline of your audience and then you can create the perfect avatar of your ideal reader. Give the avatar a name, personality, outlook on life, and a job (if that helps you better relate). Plus, this information will make it easier to find them, get to know them, and better meet their needs and desires.
How Can Speaking the Right Language Help with Conversion?
Speaking a common language with your audience allows you to better communicate with them, relate to them, and ensure you’re giving them exactly what they want. You’ll create a situation where the audience feels like they know you. This converts to trust, which will make them more likely to join your groups, register for your email lists, and buy from you.
- Shows Your Expertise. When speaking to your readers, using their language versus boring technical jargon, will help you be seen as a true expert in the field. It’s tempting to be professional and unemotional, but you want to connect with them as a person. Show them you know who they are, and that you can meet their needs.
- Establishes Trust. Speaking at the same level of your audience—using the terms they use to express frustration, happiness, joy and concern—will bolster their trust in you. Trust is a huge factor in upping your conversions. Without trust, you can write the best book evah and readers still won’t buy it.
- Helps You Develop Awesome Books & Services. The more you know about your audience, the easier it is to develop books and services that will make them happy. Learning their language helps you assess their situation and match your products to their issues. Then you can tell them about it in a way they’ll understand.
- Enables You to Create Clear Offers. Having a handle on your audience will allow you to learn how they talk about their issues, and then you can prepare an offer for them that is easy to understand and compelling.
- Creates More Effective SEO. Search engine optimization will be much easier for you if you use your readers’ language. When they search for solutions to their problems, they’ll use their own words in their search. They won’t use jargon. Understanding how they speak will help you improve your SEO.
- Helps You Design Better Sales Pages. Knowing your readers’ language and the words that mean something to them allows you to build more effective sales pages. You’ll come up with the perfect words to use and design a better page with increased conversions.
- Ensures Your Blog Content Will Be Compelling. Knowing the words your audience uses—that you’ll then use on your blog—will make your blog a more compelling magnet for your readers. You’ll speak to your audience in a way they’ll understand.
Committing to using your readers’ language on your site, in forums, and when developing your books will create more success in conversions than you imagined. Words really do matter.
You Need to Be Part of Your Tribe to Earn Their Trust
A great way to build more trust with your audience is to build a tribe. People are drawn to be part of a group, which is why communities are so popular on social media. That said, one thing groups don’t like is when an outsider comes into their territory and acts like an “expert” when they don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.
That’s why it’s important to be part of your tribe in order to earn their trust. You have to show that you’re one of them. That you’ve been where they are. That you know how to help them with their problems with tried and tested real-world solutions.
- Stay Authentic. Want to be part of the group? Then you need to be a visible, “real” person. Stop using “no-reply” email addresses or corporate position email addresses. Get rid of the fake images and be yourself. People can see through hype, so if you want a group of people to trust and admire you, you need to be trustworthy and admirable by being honest and yourself.
- Be Responsive. Any time you see comments, updates, emails and anything else that can justify a response, you should Don’t ignore it! How you respond to critics and compliments shows your audience who you are and what values you embrace. Don’t let the opportunity to show yourself pass you by.
- Show Respect. Don’t just think of your customers as open wallets and money generators. When you respect them, it shows in the words you use, the product you create, and the work you do for your community.
- Be a Resource. Offer help when you can and not just when it will pay off for you financially. That includes sending them to someone else if what they have to sell will benefit your customer more than if they bought your products. When you are a resource to others, you’ll be seen as an expert and they will give you more of their trust.
- Motivate Others. If you have the opportunity, use your knowledge and passion to motivate others. Being a cheerleader will give you the potential to be seen as someone to be looked up to, better liked, and respected.
- Share Openly. While you want to keep parts of your life private, you also want to share the parts that have something to do with your niche or audience. Try to be more open with where you’ve been and where you’re going.
- Show Proof. Being a newbie means that some people might not trust you right away. But if you take the time to get to know the others in a group and prove yourself over a longer period, it’ll go a long way to being trusted and respected by your audience.
In a group setting, it’s important to show yourself as part of that group and you’ll be accepted more readily. If you can resonate with your tribe and reveal your path to success, they’ll be more apt to respond to your efforts. People automatically trust someone they can relate to.
Where Do You Start? Hang Out Where They Do
You’ve taken the time to study your audience, gotten to know them and now understand the language they use, right? That includes the right tone, terms, and usage. Now it’s time to become part of that audience by hanging out where they frequent.
- Join Them on Social Media. Just about every social media platform has communities/groups in nearly any niche. Find a few that hold your target audience, join then, and observe your customers in action. Leave the groups that aren’t very engaging or active so you can spend more time with others who will engage with you.
- Engage with Them in Forums. If you find a forum that has your target audience, join that forum. Don’t start your presence with selling yourself right away. Behave as part of your audience, introduce yourself, follow the rules, and have real conversations with others. Listen carefully to their message.
- Join Niche Communities. Some niche communities exist outside social media, such as sites like Ning.com or NewSocialGo.com. (Plus, even more.) These are great communities because they sometimes cost money to join. If people pay to be part of a group, they’re often more serious about the niche.
- Create Your Own Niche Communities. You can also create your own niche community to attract your ideal audience. This can take more time than joining an established community, but you should do it alongside research you’re conducting so you can slowly build your community.
- Read Their Publications. When you’re sure of your audience, read what they read. (Digital or print.) You can find info about events, online resources and more through publications.
- Write Content for Their Publications. You can also become part of the community by writing and publishing in magazines, blogs, journals, and more. It will increase your name recognition as well as help you develop trust.
- Follow Their Gurus. Every niche has a certain number of gurus/leaders they like to follow. It’s imperative that you follow the same people and get to know them. When you observe how they communicate with the audience, you can learn what do do—and what not to do.
- Engage with the Competition. When you find your competition, engage with them as you would a colleague. Go to the events they attend and try to become a speaker at these events. Engage with them so you can see how they service the audience you share.
- Go to Live Events. An awesome way to interact with your audience is to attend live events—in person or online. Each type of event gives you a different way to get to know your audience.
By discovering where your audience hangs out, you can learn the right language, tone and terms to use when engaging with your target market. You’ll find these places online via social media, forums, in comments, and other types of communities. Find them, join them, observe and—when you’re ready—participate and begin building that necessary trust between you and the audience.
Learn the Special Vocabulary Used in Your Niche
When you’re ready to establish yourself as a leader in a specific niche, it’s important to learn the terms and words they use. In the internet marketing niche, some of the words are “CTA” or call to action, target audience, lists, and keywords. Every single niche has terms that are used to describe different feelings and activities.
There are different ways you can learn your niche’s vocabulary if you’re ready to connect with your audience in a better way.
- Take the Time to Get to Know Your Ideal Client. Before you market to your audience, you need to truly get to know them. Listen to their concerns and see how they discuss their complaints. Pay attention to how they celebrate and what causes them to celebrate.
- Observe Them in Their Natural Environment. This makes it sound like your audience isn’t made up of people, but animals. That’s not what I mean. You should know the real person that defines your client based on their behavior when they’re simply themselves. Everyone has a space where they can “be real,” and you want to be there with them.
- Interact with Them & Research Them. The best place to interact with your audience is where they like to be themselves. Keep notes of the questions they ask and the answers they give each other. Pay attention to the way they interact in the environment. Use this info to formulate better content for your audience.
- Focus on Their Needs. It’s important to give your audience what they need, whether those desires are spoken or unspoken. As you learn more, focus on their needs and give them what they desire. If they ask a question, respond in a post or Facebook Live.
- Let Go of Formal & Technical Language. Using super technical and formal language can turn off your audience. Sure, a group may use jargon on a regular basis, but it can also make others feel left out. Try to use less formal language while still using the words your audience will use to locate you.
- Develop Content to Help Your Audience. The content you create will be more valuable and helpful as you learn more about your audience. The content will speak to your audience in a way that makes a difference.
It takes time to learn the words and language your audience uses. It takes time to get to know them, for them to get to know you, and for you to learn to communicate using the vocabulary correctly.
Want to know even more about your target market? Want to figure out what makes them tick and–more importantly–buy? Make sure you grab your copy of Find Rabid Readers: How to Identify Your Target Market today!
