Remember who it's all for
If you waste your effort appealing to the wrong people, you won't connect with the people who matter most.
I remember planning a wedding, ten years ago, and stressing about the table decorations. I didn’t want them to look like everyone else’s table decorations, or for people to think I was blindly follow wedding trends.
Here’s why that’s stupid: the only people who know about current wedding trends are other people who are planning weddings. Most of those people were on Pinterest… not at my wedding.
Yesterday, I was chatting to a Consultants of Choice member, who was telling me about the new certifications she needs, so that her consulting practice will look more legitimate.
As gently as possible, I let her know: most of the customers who need her help have no idea what those mean. The only people who would know are her competition, and they’re the wrong people to be focusing on. Her customers aren’t searching for certification, they’re googling how to solve their problems.
Who and what are you doing it for?
This is a useful frame for lots of the choices we make in our day:
When you get dressed for the day - who’s perspective are you thinking about?
When you make home decorating decisions, what is it for? Are you designing it to look good for a theoretical, infrequent visitor, or to be a functional space you can relax and do your favourite activities in?
When you decide what kind of career you should have - who’s lens are you looking at it through? Your parents, your peer group, or yourself?
When you write your LinkedIn profile or website copy - what do you want people to think, feel and do? Is that obvious?
Do you want a life that looks good on social media to an invisible following, or do you want a life that feels good on the daily to wake up to?
How to talk so the right people listen
You might want to take this approach when choosing how you describe things, too - especially at work. Corporate documents are the worst - do you want to prove your organisational change is a good idea, or do you want people to give a shit and get on board? Choose your focus accordingly.
I spend a bit of time scrolling through the websites and LinkedIn profiles of consultants and public speakers. Sometimes I’ll read their whole homepage, or profile, and have literally no idea what they do, who they help, or what they’re on about.
Here’s what I think happens:
They’re describing themselves in a way that other people like them will understand
They’re trying to stay ‘catch-all’ for fear of scaring off a potential customer type
If you’re an optimisation consultant (is that a thing?) and you write a clever LinkedIn profile about optimising efficiency, consolidating workflows and streamlining processes, you can bet that other optimisation consultants will know what you’re on about. And that you won’t have a potential customer who says “oh damn, they only work with xxyy businesses, so that excludes me. I won’t email.”
You also won’t have a single actual customer thinking “oh yes, this describes me and my life, and I need the results they’re talking about. I’m going to reach out!” Given that’s the goal of your profile or website… that’s a sign your focus is off.
Three questions
When you’re making choices, particularly public-facing ones, ask yourself:
Who is it for?
What matters the most?
How do I point everything towards them, and that?
You may have some adjusting to do.
Til next week,
A
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Love this reminder!