What Came First, the Audience or the Product?

This isn’t a trick question. It should be easy to answer that the audience (your user) came before your product. This user is your target market and is therefore to whom you are communicating with first and foremost. So how are you delivering your message to them?

I often see people promoting their service or product in a way that misses their audience. Sometimes it’s a mistake and sometimes it’s outright arrogance. Some people are so enamored with what they’ve created that they think their audience will see them out. They rely on the promotional activities that they know and are comfortable with and completely miss their target.

Think of an audience sitting in a theatre waiting to hear your pitch. You’ve imagined a ready audience like this or you would not have created the product. You would not have come up with this unique service that you are offering if you didn’t think there was a need. How do you plan to meet their expectation? They are staring at the curtain, anticipating its opening and being enthralled by whatever is behind the red velvet.

Unfortunately, what I’ve seen companies and organizations do is to try to make the audience conform to their way of communicating which perhaps might be the most cutting edge mechanism. Instead of developing something for the stage right in front of their audience, they have put all their money in an ad on a jumbo screen outside in Times Square.

Of course this is an exaggerated example, but it fits today’s world. For instance, you cannot only rely on social media for all audiences. You have to assess how your audience communicates and meet them with that media even if “social media is where it’s at.” If that paradigm shift to electronic media has not happened for the sector you are trying to reach, you might as well be shooting arrows away from the target.

Within social media, make sure your target market is using the mode that you are using. Today’s adolescents are rarely on Facebook, opting instead for Instagram, SnapChat, Vine, Kick, and YouTube videos. Are you trying to reach them? Then see them on one of those platforms, not MySpace.

If you are not meeting your audience where they are expecting to find you, then you might as well be speaking a foreign language.