Training: Getting Your Audience’s Attention

November 2006 Communications Training: Getting Your Audience’s Attention

What is the purpose of marketing?

The overall purpose of marketing is to sell. There would be no purpose for a marketing department if we weren’t trying to sell a product. How do we do that effectively?

Choosing an Audience
A common mistake in the communication field is to forget your audience. Why should you define your audience before you start writing? The answer is simply this: without an audience, there is no purpose in communicating because there would be no one to receive your message.

When writing a communications piece, ask yourself three questions:

1. Why are you writing it?
2. Who will be reading it?
3. Why should they read it?

Answering those three questions should help you find your audience.

Writing with a Purpose
Your audience largely depends on your purpose. For instance, you wouldn’t try to market women’s beauty products to men, and you wouldn’t try to market children’s products to teenagers. To be successful, marketing relies on a specific niche within the industry. What is our company's niche? The niche depends on the type of the product. Each of our product lines have a separate marketing technique—a separate audience. Who do we target for animal nutrition products? How about beauty care? Or products for families?

Everything you write has a marketing purpose. Perhaps you are a manager who needs to send updated sales information to your team. Maybe you need to communicate with a group of customers. In each case, you might not be trying to sell a specific product, but you are writing to a specific audience with a specific purpose in mind.

As for this monthly training email, the purpose is to serve as a reminder about communication techniques. Who is the audience? Well, you of course. Those of you with communications responsibilities will receive this training—and we’re assuming that you’ll read it at some point, whether you print out a hard copy or read it from your computer desktop. But if you didn’t exist, this training never would have been written.

Remember Your Audience
Have you ever heard the phrase, “What’s in it for me?” Your audience will ask that question about everything they read. How will readers benefit by reading your message? Help your audience feel as though you are writing directly to them! For example, here are two statements about a sales camp.

"Our sales camp will focus on learning new sales tools."

More direct: “At our sales camp, you’ll learn new techniques that will help you expand your business.”

The direct approach is the better choice—using the word you helps motivate your readers to stay involved in your correspondence. They’ll also (hopefully) feel more inclined to take action and come to our sales camp.

Here are some additional examples.

Example 2: The current shipping promotion will end on Saturday, September 30, so this is a good opportunity to order online and save.

More direct: The current shipping promotion will end on Saturday, September 30, so this is your last chance to order online and save!

Example 3: This easy-to-use tool allows customers to submit names and addresses of their customers, and then we will send catalogs to them.

More direct: This easy-to-use tool allows you to submit the names and addresses of your customers, and then we will send catalogs to them for you!

Example 4: Our products are receiving a lot of exciting attention around the world. It continues to build our product brand, and it gives the company much to talk about with customers and prospects.

More direct: I hope all of the attention our products are receiving around the world excites you as much as it excites me. It continues to build our product brand, and it gives you so much to talk about with your customers and prospects.

Remember that in the world of marketing, if you don’t have an audience, you don’t have a purpose for writing. Having an audience creates your ambition to communicate.