By | Published On: November 19, 2020 |

In this week’s episode of my podcast series, I have invited Grant Leboff, who is a consultant, speaker, and author. He runs Sticky Marketing, a marketing company. I’ve known Grant for several years since I used to be a Chair and he regularly came to speak.

Who is Grant?

Grant knows a great deal about this subject, and I feel it’s particularly relevant for people to understand how to market their skills and talents. He keeps up to date and is very topical right now given the current struggles with Covid.

His main point is he believes communication has fundamentally changed. We used to get our news from radio, tv and newspapers but now we can get a great deal from social media. This means we are all media channels and that means everyone can share information. In essence, you are the solution or the answer to how to market if you grasp how to promote yourself online.

To do this well, it’s important to understand your audience. That’s about segmenting and targeting which he sees as fundamentally different. Segmenting is about appreciating who your audience are, and that we cannot be all things to all people. We need to offer relevant information and then our audience will want what we have to offer. Content must be applicable and feel right.

What is Segmentation?

Segmentation takes effort so that you really drill down on the size of the business you want, the number of employees, their interests, needs and challenges. Maybe even the emotional level so that their values match what you offer. It’s certainly more about what your audience or customer needs than what we want to offer. Targeting is then about deciding which group you want to approach and there may be more than one customer. That way the fear you can distinguish yourself and not get lost in the white noise because you know what they want. So, we must be brave and ask! What are the challenges people have that I can solve and then once you’ve targeted a group of people, what are their challenges so that you can tailor your solution?

The good news is there are fewer boundaries because we have more options than we realise. We’re no longer bound by geography and online can access a global audience. For example, as a speaker I can do this to any business in any country now. You can still do what you love in life but it’s important to recognise what the challenge is you’re solving. It’s a customer-focused discipline

What are the principles of good marketing?

So, good marketing has never changed but now we have an opportunity to get this right online. We still need to ask “whichever channel you offer the world, are you offering value?” it isn’t enough to tell people you’re good, they need to see it so testimonials help, endorsements and case studies to show what you can do.