These days, in a highly competitive and saturated market it’s extremely difficult to catch and retain the attention of potential customers. Building a targeted audience requires far more than elbow grease and long hours. It demands a strategy, consistency, commitment, time, and patience. The fundamentals of building a following have been in existence for some time but the tactics of accomplishing such results took a slight shift into a different direction. Enticing others truly takes an act of a scientific approach paired up with strategic thinking, unique information, perspective, and great storytelling.

Why build an audience? For marketers, it’s imperative to discover new ways to connect with potential customers. The science of doing so in today’s content driven world entails in establishment of a solid content marketing strategy. Consider content as the soft-selling piece to potential customers that delivers subject matter expertise, thought leadership, and innovation. In the time before time, business was basic in terms of sales and to this day human interaction and interpretation remains a decisive factor of selling.

Understand the Fundamentals of Storytelling

As marketers, we’ve been trained on the act of persuasion where we’re forced to lean on our potential prospects. This particular tactic has come to be known as the “hard sell”. Over the last several years, due to a shift in the consumer model primarily, a new approach referred to as “soft selling” has emerged and gained significant traction. It stands for “storytelling” as we’ve come to know it in the marketing industry. Due to the significant amount of saturation and competition, marketers and brands are forced to compete for their prospects attention that quite frankly has become even more difficult to acquire. With over 6 billion hours of video absorbed on YouTube and nearly 326 million mobile devices in circulation by U.S. consumers, it’s without a doubt obvious that content consumption is a key ingredient in the decision making process for online users. On a side note, there’s more mobile devices in possession than some 314 million U.S. citizens. This is where storytelling comes into play and mastering the science of it presents a tremendous amount of untapped potential for marketers and brands equally. In Layman’s Terms, storytelling is all about customer comprehension and adhering accordingly to their needs. Thru storytelling, we have the ability to share perspective, subject matter expertise, and establish thought leadership that ultimately sparks business opportunities as result.

Segmenting Your Audience

Now that you have a basic understanding of the storytelling aspect, let’s discuss target audience segmentation. Anyone that’s in the storytelling business will tell you that it’s all about clear separation. Personification plays an intricate role in segmenting your target audience. Considering storytelling with personas where you’re relating perspective back to your target audience. Focus on providing something of value that will help separate you from the closes competition. When it comes to enticing your audience, consider an evaluation of engagement, incentives, uniqueness. In other words, what will spark interest in the eyes of your potential customers?

Promotional Strategy/Incentives

When it comes to storytelling, it’s all gravy to develop a cohesive content strategy. Visitor retention is one of the hardest things to accomplish especially in today’s fast-paced and saturated marketplace. Gaining and retaining the attention of your visitors requires a promotional strategy or an incentive. A gift card, special giveaway, opt-in as result of a free trial, or anything of such nature. Bottom line, your potential customers need to be enticed in some form of fashion. Bidding for users attention on the internet is perhaps one of the most difficult things to accomplish.

How do you go about building a targeted audience?