Hello Reader,

One of our biggest challenges as business owners is remembering that our preferences and our audience's preferences are not a single circle.

We are not talking to ourselves.

(I mean, I talk to myself all the time, but in the case of marketing, we're not talking to ourselves.)

A lot of times people think of their audiences in terms of the decisions they themselves would make.

The thing is, our clients/customers/etc aren't as advanced as us in their knowledge as we are. So what's simple to us is complicated to them.

Now, that doesn't mean your marketing should treat people like they're not intelligent—chances are, they absolutely are. They simply have a knowledge gap that you can fill.

This is where a lot of marketing goes wrong: people assume far too much knowledge. (I've previously told my story of referencing "responsive design" many years ago and no one knowing what I was talking about, they just wanted their websites to look good on phones—which is responsive design). Or they assume their audiences don't want to learn anything, especially when it comes to done for you services.

The reality is that great clients want to have a baseline of knowledge so they can make good decisions and feel competent. They also want to be spoken to like they're capable of understanding.

It's actually a tricky line to walk. You need to understand your audience and what level they're operating at. It's not at your level, but if you were to draw the knowledge of what you do out on a line graph, where would they site on that graph? (This can be a really useful exercise.) Then you adapt your language to meet them there and move them forward.

I know that my audience tends to be pretty far along in their work, and that they've tried to learn "all that marketing stuff." So they have a reasonable level of knowledge, but they're not fluent. As a result, I focus a lot on the nuances of the foundations of what I do in my marketing. (My quiz data told me a whole lot about honing in on this area, but you can just ask people, trust me they'll tell you.)

Where your people live on that continuum is different from where mine do. But I promise you, you are absolutely NOT speaking to yourself. You're probably not even speaking to past versions of you.

Do not make this mistake—I see it over and over and over again. And it will hold you back.

Address your audience, not yourself.

Talk soon,

Sarah

P.S. We opened the doors to Summer of SEO 2024 yesterday. Join the fun here.​