Mastering The Supreme Art of Marketing Starts With This One Thing
Have you been in the business and marketing space for a while now?
Chances are you must have heard of this book.
(In one of those “X books every entrepreneur or marketer must read” lists)
The art of war. By Sun Tzu.
According to Peter Thiel, MBAs walk around with this book in their hands.
Knowing all that, I read the book as well.
If this is the first time you’re reading an article by me…
Hi, I’m Rahul Choudhary and I’m the founder of Beef Up Media, where we provide full-funnel marketing strategies and marketing/conversion consultation to businesses that want to elevate their brand and dominate their market.
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One of my favorite things from the book?
The supreme art of war.
Sun Tzu said…
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without going into battle.
Yes, COLD.
But…
What is The Supreme Art Of Marketing?
The supreme art of marketing is to get your target customers to take action without making them feel like you’ve sold to them any hard way.
Basically, marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing.
We, as humans, are quite tired of constantly being sold to.
So that type of marketing can be quite refreshing among all the noise around us.
How Do You Master That Art?
According to Sun Tzu, mastering the supreme art of marketing starts with…
“Know thy enemy.”
But what about the supreme art of marketing?
It starts with “knowing thy customers”.
How?
- By understanding consumer psychology
- Mapping out the customer journey
To achieve this, it’s gonna require some work.
Let’s tap into that.
Define your TARGET AUDIENCE
This involves identifying the demographics, and psychographics like interests, pain points, and behaviors of your ideal customers.
By understanding your target audience, you can easily find them, attract them, convert them, and keep them.
Here are 5 ways to go deep into your audience research.
1// Talking directly to customers
If you can just find 5 true customers and talk to them about your product/service, it’d give you a shitload of insight.
This hardly ever goes wrong.
What if you don’t have any customers?
Well, your competitors do.
2// Facebook groups + Subreddits
There’s a legit Facebook group or subreddit for almost everything.
Great places to gather insights and target people as well.
Look for the most popular topics and discussions.
Find the most common questions.
See if you can find rants from the frustrated folks.
3// Niche forums
Just Google “[Your Niche] forums” and you’d know what I mean.
For example, if your target customers are dog owners, you’d search for “dog owner forums” “pet forums”, etc.
Test a few variations.
Again… Great places to gather insights.
Look for the most popular topics, discussions, questions, etc.
4// Review mining
This is one of my personal favorite methods. (Other one is mentioned below)
Go to the reviews of your competitor’s products/services and check out the bad/average reviews.
Look for unsatisfied customers and what they talk about.
Gather that information.
GOLD.
5// Sparktoro
Sparktoro is an audience research tool.
It shows the websites your customers visit, social accounts they follow, hashtags they use, and more.
This will allow you to focus on those influences and do some social listening to gather further insights.
Makes your life so much easier.
Now What?
The more you know about your audience, the better.
But, try to focus more on their psychographics and behavior than demographics.
This will guide your customer journey.
Once you have your customer journey in place… Everything else becomes simple.
You just use it as a guide to form your full-funnel marketing strategy.
i.e. marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing.
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