2019Customer ExperienceEPISODESOctober

EPISODE#118

By October 17, 2019 September 29th, 2020 No Comments


You Must Know Your Audience to Solve Their Problems, with Spencer Lum

To offer people something of value that solves a problem, you must know your audience. You can’t market correctly, offer the right solution, or adequately gauge how customers will react if you don’t know them. So what does that learning process look like? Listen in as Dean and I chat with Spencer Lum—The Big Vision Guy at ExtraBold—all about your audience.

After years of being unable to hold down a steady job, Spencer found himself building websites. This morphed into helping people with branding. Eventually, Spencer realized he could help others best by solving their very specific problems. He understands how to create and market addictive content. Listen to this episode of Just the Tps for insight into his mind!

Outline of This Episode

  • [0:45] We introduce our guest of the day, Spencer Lum.
  • [3:05] How he learned business the hard way
  • [6:00] Becoming his own boss
  • [10:20] Launching his first business
  • [12:20] Developing a framework
  • [15:40] Look at the symptoms to narrow down the problem
  • [20:20] What is the solution to the problem?
  • [24:00] Understanding practical and emotional pain
  • [26:30] How to build your unique mechanism
  • [29:40] Back to the basics: know your audience
  • [31:50] The part psychology plays
  • [36:30] Spencer’s special Just the Tips offer!

There’s always a “but”…

When Spencer was a teenager, his Dad told him “You can achieve anything you want…BUT I really don’t know if you’re going to”. It was meant to be a pep-talk and it fell miserably short (but luckily he can look back on it in a humorous light). After years of starting and quitting jobs and becoming a lawyer (it didn’t stick), he finally realized his dad was right. So what was the logical next step?

Spencer became a serial entrepreneur.

While he was working in an HR position, he started building a website for himself. He soon realized that there was a market for that kind of work, and his first business was born (and he subsequently quit his HR job). Keep listening as we chat about his transition from job-to-job and finally landing on something that stuck.

Develop a framework that meets people’s needs

We know if we offer something to the market that nobody needs, it’s not going to succeed. It’s simple: what you offer has to be something that is needed. Spencer lays it out like this:

  • Offer what people need.
  • Find the right way to convey your message.
  • Make sure you’re speaking to the right audience.

He fully embraces Gary Bencivenga’s “persuasion equation”. The equation, in its simplest form, looks a little like this:

Problem + Promise + Proof + Proposition = Persuasion

There is a problem only you can solve that you promise to solve for your audience. You show proof that you can solve it (data and case studies) and propose how you shall do it. The simplest means of persuasion.

Know your audience better than they know themselves

To sell an idea and appropriately pitch to your audience, you need to understand who they are and what problems they need solved. Spencer points out that most audiences don’t actually know what their problem is. Your job, then, is to figure out their problems based on the “symptoms” and provide a solution.

You need to be able to get in your audience’s head and offer to solve their very specific problem.

Are their pages not ranking in google? Do they have low conversion rates? Do they have enough cash-flow from their conversions? Take their measurable problems and find a way to give voice to a solution.

Once you’ve identified the symptoms of their problem, narrowed down the issue, and marketed the solution—then you develop the system to solve their problem. You must 100% understand your market before creating anything. 

Develop your own secret sauce

You have to take everything that you’ve learned about your audience and their problems and develop your own unique and oh-so-special mechanism for solving that problem. You cannot attempt to solve “all the problems” for “all the people”. Spencer advises finding your niche—an audience that you connect with better than anyone else.

Solve the problem in a way only you can accomplish.

Everyone has something particular that works for them. Your vernacular won’t reach or speak to everyone and that’s okay. Every word you choose and every bit of what you do needs to match with your audience and how they want things done. Everything you do MUST align with who your audience is.

Resources & People Mentioned

Make sure this “music” paragraph is intended in the Libsyn post

Musicfor “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Audio Production and Show notes by
PODCAST FAST TRACK
https://www.podcastfasttrack.com

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