Does your market put on, wear, or apply makeup? Do they drink soda, pop, or coke? Do they call their phone an Android? How do they pronounce “Versailles”?
Those don’t sound like earth-shattering questions, but if you’re doing it wrong, you’re telling your readers you’re an outsider. You don’t know them, and they will erect subtle psychological barriers against what you’re saying.
This was one of the most interesting takeaways from my recent trip to IIEX in Austin, which is a conference for the market research industry.
Frankly, I thought I was in the wrong place. In the first few minutes, I realized these weren’t “my people.” I was struggling with how to apply all the wisdom in that room to my main emphasis, which is customer data platforms. But I stepped aside, changed mental gears, and tried to think a little more broadly. How can specialized publishers learn from all the accumulated wisdom in the market research industry?
Here’s one way.
Imagine your subscriber base is mostly high-net-worth men who are thinking about retirement, and all your marketing copy is written by 30-something women. They know their stuff, and their advice is accurate and on point, but is it resonating with these old guys?
The standard marketing toolkit might not help you solve this problem. You’re busy A-B testing headlines and images and calls to action, when the real problem is that you’re saying “pop” when they drink “sodas”.
That’s the first takeaway. Recognize you might have a language problem that none of your standard tools are going to identify.
Text analytics can help you figure this out. You can upload a sample of your text alongside a sample of the way your market actually speaks, and it will tell you where the differences lie.
This technology was developed to find creepy old guys pretending to be 14-year-olds online. Try as they might, there were certain tells in their word choice, expressions of sentiment, and whatnot, that allowed law enforcement to track them down.
That same technology can help you ensure you’re speaking to your audience in a way that makes them feel comfortable.
There are tons of applications for this sort of analysis, which I’m sure are popping to mind right this second. (If not, give me a call.)
The complicated part is getting representative text from your target market. It’s not as if there are readily available databases of “this is how 65-year-old men speak.”
Which brings us to the second takeaway. There are hidden benefits to allowing your customers to comment, complain, and review. It creates a source you can use to get to know them a little better. If you think about it, you’ll find other potential sources.
- Emails to customer service, and transcriptions of your customer service calls.
- Extensive one-on-one interviews. (Recorded and transcribed.)
In addition to these first-party sources, you can also use things like podcasts, blogs, or Reddit threads frequented by your market.
The bottom line is to look for ways to find out how your people communicate and use that information to inform how you speak to them!
Relative Insight is one of the companies that does this sort of analysis.
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And here’s a bonus takeaway from IIEX.
A lot of companies have pre-built survey panels that are ready and willing to give you a quick take on your headline, cover image, new logo, etc.
Why rely on your art director to pick the right image for your market, when you can ask your market to give a Tinder-like left- or right swipe to a few sample magazine covers? The costs can be quite reasonable, and you can get feedback quickly.
If you’re interested in any of these things, give me a call. I don’t take referral fees, so you can always trust that my advice is unbiased and that I’ll act in your best interest.
Love this article. It really captures the mismatch we see across promotions in email and social.
Greg, this is really an interesting concept. As we are shifting into a very intensive analytic community of data scientists crossed with real estate people and biz analysts, we’ve been trying to watch that our language adjusts accordingly. I recall year’s back someone internally wanting to use very antiquated language for something that made us sound like we were far from “modern”. Fortunately it was caught well in advance of getting “out there”.
I’m glad you caught it!
I guess the scary thing is the possibility of saying things that unintentionally alienate you from your market. In the old days, we handled that by meeting people and talking to them. Or at least talking on the phone. But now we have lots of other tools that can serve as a check.