If you’ve ever wondered why some voices cut through the noisiest of environments like a hot knife through butter, and others just get drowned out by the noise…
Read on.
You’ll not only discover why that happens, but also how to make your voice and marketing message heard by the people who need to hear it the most - your customers.
First, let’s look at the why.
One of the key concepts to understand is the signal to noise ratio - specifically, as it relates to online communication.
There are entire classes dedicated to exploring this topic if you study communication science, but for our purposes here…
The signal can be defined as the right information for the right recipient, at the right time.
The noise is the rest of the information. It can be good, it can be bad, but if it’s not the right information for the right individual at the right time, it’s noise.
Let’s look at a specific example.
There’s all sorts of information floating around dog training on YouTube. There are thousands of channels on dog training where I can get information on all sorts of training methods for dogs.
How do I sort and sift through all the information to find the signal, not just the noise?
If I’m left to my own devices, I have to spend hours upon hours trying to figure out what the good stuff is, what the right approach is, and what specifically I should do about my particular problem.
Trainer A says, you should only do positive training. Meaning, you don’t do any leash correction or whatnot - you just sit there patiently until the dog does what you want, and then you reward it.
Trainer B says that you should take a balanced approach.
They’re almost at war with each other.
How am I (or your customer, or anyone) supposed to figure out what’s the correct approach?
It reminds me of the endless debate in the copywriting world - short form vs long form.
As if it has to be one or another all the time. Different things for different situations, right?
It’s the same with dogs.
For example, German Shepherds are a working breed. They need stimulation, they need a job to do, they need discipline... and if they don’t they’re going to take things into their own hands. (Paws?)
Toy poodles, on the other hand, will require a different approach.
Then there’s your personality. How you feel about the training itself is going to affect the effectiveness of the training a lot.
Lots of noise, in other words.
So what’s the signal?
How do you (again, or your customer!) focus on the signal of the thing that’s going to help you the most?
One of the many ways, which also happens to be the easiest one, is to be hyper specific.
So I have a rescued German Shepherd, who’s never been disciplined and structured, and he’s not a puppy, either.
Would you agree that if I come across a dog trainer online who specializes in rescued German Shepherds, their message would get my undivided attention? You bet!
A lot of people are afraid of going that granular.
It’s counterintuitive. They think that if they narrow their audience so much, they’re going to make less sales.
Not true… you can’t be all things to all people. Until you get really famous.
But the way you do that is by having a very strong, single, focused signal. This way you hack the entire signal to noise ratio issue.
Then, you expand the reach of your signal by branching out a little bit more, a little bit more, and a little bit more… until you’re a household name.
For example, I started out by appealing to internet marketers who used article marketing specifically for SEO purposes to submit to article directories to then send people back to their websites. How much more specific can you get than that!
But that helped me to build an ultra-engaged audience.
Some of those people are still on my list, and I still get emails from them. They still buy from me.
Just because back then, I was the only one who talked to them specifically. I cared about their specific needs, problems, and pain points.
I wasn’t just another source of noise.
To Your Success!
Steve.
Master Online Entrepreneur
No comments:
Post a Comment