 So when you're short, and you have a room like this, it's really intimidating. Because you can only look up. So if I'm looking straight at you, I apologize. How many of you are direct with your clients? How many of you have the guts to tell them when maybe they're not doing the right thing? Yeah, that's pretty good, right? How many of you wishing you had to do that? Yeah, well, it'll appeal to about ten of you. That's good. So what we're going to do today is talk about how it's not all about you. It's all about you, but it's not all about the business owner. So how to take an audience-first approach to connecting with your audience online. So this has basically come about the number of meetings I've been in, the number of hungry hippos I've had in the room that basically... You know what a hippo is? Like a greedy business owner that won't listen to your advice. Anyway, Google it. That's good. So basically, when you need to use data and you need to use analytics to be able to convince people that an audience-first approach is required. And no matter what you do, whether you're a web developer, designer, digital marketer, everything's about the audience. It's why we do what we do. So this will be running through how you connect with the audience. So this is me. I'm Paula. I'm here because you can't really shut me up. So I'll talk wherever I can. And I really like sharing my knowledge with people. So if you want to ever reach out to me, I'm more than welcome to chat. And you can reach us on Twitter as well. So feel free to get in touch. So I've got a few cool statements in here. So this is a confused business owner is one who doesn't know how to connect with their customer. I've got to stop the timer. Because they don't know who they are. So if any of your business isn't going anywhere or it's not growing in the way that you want, a large reason of that is, well, who are you trying to talk to? Who are you trying to attract your business to to help it grow? And this can be a big problem in business. And especially when trying to get people to put pen to paper and paper to digital. It's like how do you, you know, how do you go somewhere when you don't know who you're talking to? So I just, ooh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Damn, what did you do to me? Are you killing me? Okay, there you go. So understanding your audience and their problem allows you to provide a solution. So the idea is solution first is audience first. If you can help provide a solution to your audience, then you're on the right track. So how do you understand your audience? You need to be your audience. You need to understand not what a, not what a solution is. So you have a fuel efficient car, you're going to help fuel economy, you're going to help the environment, et cetera. Okay, but why do people buy fuel efficient cars? Who are those people? What's the other shit that's going on in their life? Who are they? Who do they talk to? What do they respond to? Right? So it's about going to that next level and understanding their needs and wants from a demographic point of view and a psychographic point of view. And if you look at the way Google is taking technology, Google's going very much into an audience-first approach with all their digital marketing channels. So that soon you'll pretty much not be able to bid on paid keywords because you're going to be bidding on, is it Tom Dick or Harry and how old are they and what's their interest. And then Google will be able to use that data to then be able to market to other Tom Dick and Harry's and things. So this is the way that the world's going. So really understanding who your audience is more important than ever. So if you think about this in terms of selling, you think about it in terms of the left, left, right. Help, help, sell. Provide value and then sell. You've all heard that from several speakers over this conference, right? Yeah, the one that before, as I watched in, she's saying, you've got to provide value. You've got to keep them interested. This is the way that you do it. We're all in an on-demand world. People are like, oh, it's yelling at me. It's frustrating me. So you've really got to be able to cut through that market. The best sales people in the world don't sell. They educate. They help. They build connections based on their experiences and their understanding. And what makes them successful? What makes them then able to sell is the fact that they know their customer. They've put their audience first. They've taken the time to get to know their customer. This wouldn't be the first time that they've worked in that industry. They know the questions they can ask. They know the time of data knock on the door. They know the time of data bring them. They know everything what time feeding time is. They know all of that information. That's how they sell. So the ability to connect with a target audience separates great companies from the ones that are just doing okay. The great business provides value and is helpful. This is why contact marketing is where it is. This is why SEO is contact marketing, because it's helping. Get to know your audience. Mel style. Who he likes? Mel Gibson. No one. Oh, come on. I know you do. We all love Mel, right? Who doesn't love a little bit of this? Yeah? We have been communicating through creating audience connections for decades. Absolutely great. This is traditional marketing 101. People employed market research companies. People employed groups of women to come into the room. In Mel's case, everyone remembers what women wants? Yeah? Putting a video clip to the slides would have been way too hard. So this is as good as it gets. But he basically was said, you don't know how to sell to a woman because you're not a woman. Right? So he became a woman, so to speak. But he did the mascara. He did the waxing. He did the pantyhose. And he got into the psyche of a woman. He got to know them. Right? He's dead at them. What is she thinking about right now? Right? Why is she here? Why is this important to her? Why is this routine important to her in her life? He became them. So this is why this is really important. And this isn't new. All we're doing now is we've replaced billboards with websites and bannerites. Right? So it's still the same principle. Nothing's really changed. We just need to find out how to use the resources that are available to us to become our audience. So how do you get inside your customers' heads? You have access to more audience data than you think. So when people say, use a research. When people say, learning about your audience. When you sit there and you're trying to convince your client that, you know, you know what you're doing and that you know your audience. Have you ever wondered just, this is all really overwhelming? Like, this isn't a big client. This is a small client. How could they possibly have the resources to be able to find out the data and the values that they need to do? Right? I've had big clients. I've had small clients. I've had people with the money and without it. And I've figured out ways to be able to convince the people in the room and the people that need to see the data, what they need to know on a very low budget using mostly free resources. And I'm going to take you through these today. The most important thing is to listen. When you are going through this process, you need to just really try and step out of the psyche of your customer or your business and think about just listening. If it's better if you record it and then come back later, then you can do that. But the idea is to listen to what people have to say and as tempting as it is, don't sell. So, the most successful hands-down thing that I've ever done in my career is talking to the sales team. Okay? And talking to my client's sales team or getting them to do it. It's the longest cycle. So normally you say, can you talk to the sales team about product A? Find out what questions they get asked. Find out the use of frustrations that people ask for when they call them. Are the people that are calling them men or women? What time of day are they calling? And the sales team will think you're the best thing ever because no one ever asks the sales team. No one ever asks the internal business development managers who are answering the phone. Who is our audience? Like, we think we know who they are, but who actually are they? So, if you can organize to connect with your audience through your internal sales team, you're going to find out the questions they're going to be asked. You're going to keep finding out the customer problems and what they are, and you're going to be able to really figure out what that void is. Surveys and questionnaires. Who doesn't love incentivized questionnaires? Come on. Seriously, shoot for free. Yeah? So, you've got to go beyond your product though, and the survey and questionnaire is not about you. It cannot be about you. Nowhere in the questionnaire can I ask about your product. Nowhere in the questionnaire can I ask about your brand. This is about your audience. This is about your customer. What time do they wake up? What time do they go to bed? How much do they earn? How many family members do they have? What's their favorite magazine to read? What's their favorite podcast? What's their favorite color? If they were a fruit, what fruit would they be? You know? I mean, this is cool stuff that you can ask them that's a little bit different. That's really going to help you understand what makes them tick. Right? So, make it about them. There's no way shape or form besides that you've incentivized it probably, you know, with a freeback. Coffee or whatever it is. You know, think about it's totally about them. You're trying to get into their psyche. You're trying to be the male, right? So, customer feedback forms is not an old concept. It's about asking customers post-purchase about their experience and the impact that your production service has made for them. Now, this has two benefits. The first one is testimonials. So, you put a little disclaimer down the end saying, are you okay if I use this as a testimonial? Because they're going to be saying, this product saved me time by. This product saved me money by. This product solved this problem. And then before you know it, you've got content for your website without actually having to go and look for it. But the second thing it does is it tells you that maybe the product that you invented or the website that you have wasn't actually originally intended to solve that problem. Maybe it wasn't for that purpose. But from what you're getting back from your customer about the way, the void that it's solving in their life and the impact that it's making, you're actually realizing that your product and your brand are something that you didn't thought it was going to do. Has anyone had that happen? Yeah, if you're not dead? Okay, social channels. If you're not on social, well, you're not in the game. But it's about being active on social. And I'm going to take you through in particular Facebook and Facebook groups and how you can use those to find out about your audience. But if you do have a Facebook presence in terms of the left, left, right and how you need to help them, do not use your Facebook channel to sell. Educate, educate, sell. So make sure that you're helping providing value in your creating that cut through and that someone comes to your Facebook page and they're checking out your business and all they see is sale, sale, sell, case study, sale, sale, case study. That doesn't help them. That's about you. So you need to make that about what do they want to see? What's going to make them laugh? What's going to connect with them? Facebook groups. So Facebook analytics, I haven't particularly talked about a lot, but if ever you have the time, about Facebook analytics for your audiences, Facebook are so far superior. Well, they were until they got busted for it. Really like so far superior in terms of the information that they can show you about the psyche of your customers down to like what audience groups they are and what interest groups they follow and the type of magazines they read. Like they have a lot of really cool free information and if you can still get it, then definitely ride that train as long as you can because it's a world of knowledge and that's like a whole other talk. So if you want me to give you some information on that, just ping me on the channels and I'll give you some really good resources to look at that in. But that's a rabbit hole for me. You'd never leave. So we'll just stick to Facebook groups now. So this is the idea. This is the process you can go through. Join the group where your audience hang out, right? Go to Facebook. You'll see the buttons that's groups there. And then I've done AdWords experts because AdWords is my thing. So I go on there and I go, okay, here's all the groups. I'm going to want to join to learn about these professionals, customers. And then you look at where they hang out with each other in a closed environment, right? So the idea is that there's a little bit of privacy, which is why no sale, ask, listen, it's super, super, super important if you're going to do this. Slowly start to offer advice. Help. Engage news. Advice. Do not sell. Someone makes a statement. You as a professional or you as somebody that can help because you wouldn't have a business if you can't help, then you answer their question. You say, I've had this situation and this is how I handle it. I've tried to use that image on my clients' websites and I found that it didn't work as well, but here's something that did work. You've given advice, this doesn't work, and you've given, but this does. So you've given something that provides the value and that helps. So here's an idea. Find an industry blog. So for me, I might go to Search Engine Land, find a really cool blog or article that I think my other people will like. I go to the people and I share that content. It's not about me. It's something that's going to benefit everyone. I get no direct benefit from that at all. Besides people thinking, I'm cool because I've shared. So you look for hot topics, recurring questions and shared posts. Has anyone been in a group where they've noticed the same questions coming up and up and up and you just like, shut up. Yeah? So do that. Find those really annoying questions. Yeah? They're the things that people want to know. So learn them. Secondly, look for things that are really high engagement. By engagement, I don't mean likes. No one cares about likes. I mean comments, engagements, re-shares. That's what people go, you know, what other people in this network, they like this. This is something that interests them. This is something they want to talk about. Right? So that's getting into their psyche, finding those things that in an overly saturated world, they go, that is actually a conversation that I'm going to stop doing what I'm doing and I'm going to be a part of that conversation. Did anyone know that there's a search bar in Facebook groups? Yeah? Cool. I'm really happy with that. Use hashtags within the group to find content, to find tagged content. So a common one in groups is hashtag ask or hashtag question. So you can do that and you can, in the groups, you're just like, you're not even commenting, remember? Nobody knows who you are by this stage besides the little comments here and there. You're like scouring for information. So I might go into groups and I do this once every three months, say, which are groups that I'm in, which you can see there, and I'll go, okay, add words. How can I help people with add words in this group? What article can I give them? What can I provide them with value? Then you can comment. So once you have momentum and trust in the group, and that takes time, and I'm not talking three days, I'm not talking a long weekend, I'm talking like an extended period of time. Use your common sense. Ask questions. So I absolutely love Clifford. He's amazing and I love this example. So this is a group that's for web professionals. 40 ways to generate leads. We are working on the ultimate guide for where the agency leads and ready this week and would love your input. Which of these have worked best for you? Here's the list. You don't need to think, this went nuts. This has now given Clifford something that he can do and produce content for his people in his tribe that helps him, this is actually his group, that helps him learn about his audience because that's what you're trying to do right now. You're not trying to sell. You're giving something for free. So this is something really cool. Then we've got learn and listen. So this is about using data that you've got already to find out more about your audience. Form fills. So if you have something on your website like a gravity forms, you can actually capture that data. So that data lives on your website. And a contact form seven doesn't, that's as far as my knowledge of forms goes. But if you are able to catch that data, it leads into a CRM. Looking at what questions of people have asked in the form fills is a really good way to figure out what's making them come to your website. So if you're a training brand, how much does it cost is a really common one, all sorts of things. So you can formulate those to have frequently asked questions, but you can also generally get to know the struggles that they're having and what they go through. This is what I call a rabbit hole, but everyone here knows Reddit. Yeah, I didn't until a couple of days ago. And oh my God, what a world. So this is something that what I've done here is a bit of a theme with being a personal trainer. So if you put in something like get fit, how to get fit from not being fit, are any of your guys, boyfriends trying to get fit, how to get fit while poor. At video games, what's an easy way to get fit at home. These are all outside of the box for a personal trainer, but this is bloody good content. Yeah, because people that get fit at home are going to get to the point where they don't want to do it at home anymore. Yeah, so you've produced content and you've started that funnel and you've got to know the audience. And remember, this isn't always necessarily stuff that will directly help your product. So this will help a personal trainer get into the psyche of his customers, but not necessarily the right person for him right at that point in time. But this definitely is something that can really, really help. And obviously forums that relate to you as well. Answer the public. If there is one thing you do from this talk today, please go away and visit answerthepublic.com. It is absolutely free and it is amazing. It just has changed the world of content marketing, changed the world of how we understand our audiences and our customers. So what it is is it's a simple search bar at the top. You put your two words in personal trainer. Now, this is one example of five different screenshots that it presented me of keys, things that come out of it. This is actual, this is not their made-up database. This is the five search engines, Google basically, and what people type into Google, whatever, other ones, to generate search inquiries. And this is a database of those over time. Why, will, can, who, what, which, how, when, etc. If you look at all of those questions, like you can just imagine how many questions are there right now. Imagine if every one of those was a blog post. If every one of those was a content post. There you go. There's your content strategy for 12 months. Yeah? Then you share that content in the group. So educate, educate, educate, drive people back to your website. Get the concept. So you are also learning about your audience. This is totally audience-based. Nothing about this is you putting, my product is $49.95. Google Analytics, another rabbit hole. But all you need to do here is look at popular pages, bounce rates, and exit rates. Because if it is a popular page, you'll have a number of page views, but that could be from SEO. The bounce rate will be relatively low, and the exit rate won't be 100%. Unless it's the contact page, in which case it really cares. So that's essentially what you're looking for. You're just looking for red flags of things that maybe aren't working too good, and things that maybe aren't communicating the right message for the audience. And my absolute personal favorite, user testing. So if ever you've had a situation, and I've had about 10 or so, so, so, where the business owner's gone, I don't like the design. I just don't like it. You're like, yeah, but we've shown it to people. They like it, they get it, they understand it. It's good for them. Yeah, but I don't like it, make it blue. I've shown it to my brother's sister's father, and he said to make it italics, so can you make it italics? Yeah, same story. User testing is about $30 a video. It actually, you can choose your age, you choose the country they're from, the demographics, everything. They find real people, and it's their video. Just looking at your website, you ask a question, the screen flashes to that page. You ask another question, the screen flashes. And you actually get to see them responding firsthand. Tip, also get them to review your competitor's website on the same video. Yeah, so go, here's my video, here's my competitor's video. So you're then seen. They get really angry when you do it, because they only get paid a flat rate. So they get really shitty. But usually about 15 minutes is the total time before they start to sort of make stuff up. But it's a really good way because if they like something, they tell you. And if they don't like it, they will rant about it. So you really get to understand who they are and what it is that makes them tick. But you don't need more than two. So for the total price of $60, you can take that to the business owner. You can take that to the decision maker and go, look, this is what people think. And we've had cases where we've put head-ins with full colors behind them, and we've done this and people have said, oh, I'm trying to click on it, it looks like a button. So you make it 50% transparency. So it's the little things that you pick up that you can benefit from. But my God, does it ever, if there's anything that helps convince somebody that what you're doing is right, it's one of their audience telling them that they're right, that you're right. Worth its weight in gold. AB testing, how am I going for time? Where are we at? Oh, okay, cool. Is everyone following? That's so cool. So AB testing, so what I've done is I've stolen an image, but put it into three areas. So the three things I think that you can test that are really good are ads, and I mean like Facebook ads. So with Facebook ads, you test images. So you can test different images to the same audience, different images to different audiences. And that can be a really good way to test who responds to what and what who engages with what, because Facebook have this really cool, tricky, not so cool algorithm where they actually hovers over an image. They sort of count that in terms of what they show more. So it's not all about like their actual physical engagement that you can see. Another way is landing pages. So you can test AB test landing pages. It's a little bit trickier, but also pretty cool if you do have the budget for that. And the other one is welcome emails. And what I've seen a lot of people test with this lately is emojis. So you can actually put like emojis in your email subjects lines now. Like a love heart against a palm tree. Then you might want to test like a palm tree against a cat. You know what I mean? See what people like. So just test little things to small audience groups. And also you can test things like subject lines and stuff like that. But like these are tons of different ways that you can test. Then you split the audiences. And then you can see which audience responds best to which mechanism you're choosing. Another topic that could be a whole talk, but use of frustrations you can see with heat maps and mouse tracking. Get a hot jar account. They're free for up to like a hundred views or a thousand views. And you can just delete the old ones and reset it again. It's hot jar. It's really, really good. And basically the way that it works is the really red part is where they're hovering their mouse. Like where the mouse is sitting. And people do that with where they're reading. So they'll just like leave the mouse as a navigation device. And you can see over the face. You can see like the connection. Like where the connection's happening there. People are connecting with the person. And people are connecting with the message in there as well. In my personal opinion, I think there could be a button there because they're so like that's such a big heat spot. You could definitely look at that and you know suggest something like that to there. And obviously the free demo on the right maybe that free demo could come down and sit there instead. So you can do things like that. But you can see how important it is to do this to really figure out if what you thought is the way that your audience are thinking. Because it's not all about you, right? So this is a really good way to do it. But it does take effort to solve use of frustrations and plenty of time. This is an invested process and it's just good to know about these things so that when you do get the projects that allow for you to do it, it's often overlooked in planning. So it's often something that people forget about but it is really, really worth it. So how do we apply this to websites? The first thing is to define the problem that you solve. So Mr. Tesla man here, what does he solve? He should solve. To save time, save money, feel good, look good, generate sales. So our personal trainer, he helps people feel good, look good, get their mojo back, get their energy back. So these are the types of things that you have to define right at the start and it's just a simple question. And if they don't seem, if your clients don't seem to know this question, then you basically take them through the process that we've just been through. Use some of those tools to be able to convince them and find out who their audience actually is. Or yours. The old saying, everyone knows this, you have three seconds to connect with your customer. So use your website to connect and engage. So these are just some things that I've noticed over my time doing this sort of thing and that I share them with you. I hope you find them useful. So optimize the experience for your audience. We've got, I've named him Baz, the hipster. But we've got the mum, Mary, the mum up there. It's a brand new baby. And Sue, the career driven woman. So three different audiences. Now maybe you're a brand, maybe you're like Ticketeck or a two, you know, STI travel or something. And you actually capture all of these people. So we'll talk about how you segregate, how you segment that. But maybe you're just trying to talk to one of those people. Don't try and talk to everyone. So let's think about it in terms of travel with site structure. One page, one solution. That's it. No more than that. One thing that you're trying to do per page. So think about Baz, the hipster. Baz, the hipster has a backpacking tour that he wants to do around Europe. So he's got a particular intent under the same brand. Sue, the career driven woman. She might want to take a cruise. So again, that's a different audience, a different page. So think about your audience and think about the way that that would sit in terms of your site structure and your products as well. So you're thinking about your products but also thinking about your solutions and your audiences are making sure that you're not trying to be everything to everyone because your audience would be a very defined person. Site layer. Again, audience respond to a different amount of content. Is it mobile responsive? Is it desktop? Is it long form content? Is it short form content? Is it mobile or desktop? So these are things that you would have noticed hopefully in all of your audience data and in Google Analytics as well. So when you're planning their redesign, then think about these things as well. Have you ever dealt with someone that said you absolutely must 100% do video? Yeah, maybe you don't. Just maybe you don't. Who's your audience? How do they engage content? Is it learning how to, you know, watch them to learn how to teach someone how to ride a bike? How to make a cake? Yes, you probably want to watch that on YouTube. Is it reading about history? You know, you might want to read that. Is it imagery? Some people feel compelled to put images on a website even though their audience has absolutely no interest in viewing that image. So I think it's important to have a team communicate the solution at all. So think about who your audience is and make sure that the content that you're producing really does relate to that person. Meet these old friends. Who's seen these before? Yeah? Personal favourite? The graph. I see that on Facebook ads probably five times a day. Originality people. Originality. I know, right? If only she got the royalties, I tell you what, she'd be a rich woman. So use visual design to engage. Yeah? Are these engaging? They probably were the first time you saw them. Maybe not so much now. And the fact that, you know, there's leading digital agencies out there because Facebook thinks I'm interested in it for some body reason. But they still use this. They still use these photos. Photos. So, you know, how many times have you been to look for a word developer and you've seen the one in the top left? It doesn't help. Apparently there are accountants, business owners, CEOs, finance brokers. You know, he's a very busy man. So make sure it's engaging. Go back to our audience. Personalisation. That's all you have to talk to is that one person that's making the decision about your product to really make that connection with them. Okay, briefly touching this yesterday, but the tone of voice. Talk at a level that communicates. Don't force the sell. If your audience want to yell that, by all means yell away. But for the rest of everybody else, don't do it. What's the right tone of voice for your customer? So some things, other things we've learnt along the way are using frequently asked questions actually into the content. So going back to the solution-based approach, everyone has frequently asked questions page here. If you don't, just build one tonight, because they're really cool. But basically, one list of frequently asked questions in the case of a tourism website is going to be really generic here. So let's talk to the people that are going to Peru. What do they want to know? They want to know what the weather is going to be like in July. They want to know if they need a visa. So you go to answer the public, you search Peru. You're going to get all those questions that people are asking. And you put those on the page about travel information in Peru. So you're actually helping them and engaging with your audience and providing those solutions right on the site. You have not solved them. Besides the button at the top, there is no pop-up, there is live chat. There is nothing except content, except helpful, helpful content. I'm super proud of that site. Allow users to opt in. So I love a good live chat. We recently put it on one of our sites and it has gone absolutely nuts. I've never been asked how much a website costs so much ever. But the email list has been built in, so that's pretty good. But allow users to control your website. Don't take over their control. So when you start popping things up, when you have a live chat that automatically pops up on the home page, before you've even scrolled off the first banner, why did you even pay for that click? Why did you even bother? Like, let them get to know you. You know? Be aware that you are probably the fourth or fifth website that they visited and they're just going to shut you down just as easily as they open to you. So we had a situation a couple of weeks ago. We had an emergency dentist and I of course went to the paid ads and I said, late night dentist. And I clicked on all the ads. First top five ads, how many do you think were open late? How many? How many had a responsive website with a big click to make a booking number? One. They're the one that we went to. They're the one that we spent $500 with a late night dentist appointment at. Yeah? Because the first people didn't do it. They didn't think about the audience. They didn't think about the fact that if you're in that situation, then you've got a very specific need. You know? You've got to vary. I mean, that would not have been shaped on AdWords, by the way. So make it really good for them. But don't do automatic pop-ups. Live chat is fantastic. It's a great way to connect with your audience. Just keep it on the down low and let them choose to view it if they want to. But let's see the next level of this. Boom. This was after being on the site for a total of seven seconds. God, I hope none of you are this quiet. But if you are, please take this down. So this was like going so soon. I wasn't going anywhere. I was on the homepage. I hadn't gone anywhere. I'm going to be buying Christmas hampers now with my $10 discount for wanting to go somewhere. But I can't even access the live chat anymore. So the annoying live chat has now been replaced with the annoying going so soon pop-up. This was a paid ad that I clicked once to get this. So be mindful of your customers. Be respectful of their space. Be respectful of their process. None of us like people shouting information. I hope I'm not shouting information. So just like really be respectful of it. Last slide. Well done. And again, this is probably like my absolute pet hate. But pop-ups on a mobile? Yeah? When you actually can't click the close button because you're on a mobile? Yeah? Just, again, you know your audience unless your audience really loves to be super frustrated. Just like going to the setting in the pop-ups that says switch off on mobile. Because it's not the right space. It's not the right audience for that. So connect. Get engaged. Help. Solve problems. You will breed loyalty. You will increase revenue. And you will connect with your customer. Thank you.