Self-Promotion is Not About You!

I know that sounds contradictory, but it’s true. That’s because whether you’re promoting your business, a charitable organization, a political candidate, a cause, or yourself, the promotion is about your target audience.

“Yeah, I know,” you say. “I have the demographics on them: age, income, and residential area – all that physical stuff.” But while demographics are necessary, increasingly they are not sufficient. “But,” you say, “I also have psychographics on them: attitudes, values, lifestyle, opinions, and personality characteristics – all that psychological stuff.” Again, while psychographics is necessary, increasingly it is not sufficient.

As the marketing seas change from emphasis on promoting you and your features, they are shifting to drilling down to understanding where your target audience is emotionally at the moment - what their fears, needs, and desires are. They’re also focusing on what benefits you can provide your audience wherever they are.

How do you do that? Online marketer Alex Mandossian says, “Do an Ask Campaign.” You cannot simply assume you know what your audience wants from their demographics and psychographics alone. If you want to match what you provide with your audience, you have to ask them directly what their most burning question is about your topic (a topic which you already know is of interest to them generally).

This tells you exactly what they want and need. You can then fashion your self-promotion around these questions and your answers to them. In doing this:

You demonstrate your interest in what’s important to them
You begin to further develop a rapport and relationship
You showcase your solutions to their problems
You highlight the benefits only your solutions provide
You are seen as a caring and accessible expert.

What all this boils down to is when you promote yourself, you need to do it in such a way that it is first and foremost about your audience and their immediate problem. Then when you have their attention, you begin to introduce what you can do to solve their problem, detailing your benefits and how they are superior to the competition's.

It is still about you but in a more savvy, relationship-building, and productive way.