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Given that today is election day here in Alberta I know many of you will instantly relate to this. Just this last weekend was my third annual Profitable Personal Trainer live workshop and like every event of this kind one of the first, biggest and most important points was to identify your audience. Many interpret this is researching demographics and associated data to determine who they are trying to attract.

This is the wrong approach, in fact applying that data to the equation is the final step, the validation that you have in fact identified your audience and they do in fact reside within your immediate reach.

Last night while unwinding from the whirlwind workshop weekend (I get so jacked up with all the mutual inspiration that I always find it difficult to unwind to sleep the night after) my wife’s cellphone rings…it’s an automated phone call from one of the electoral candidates.

The message was heavily scripted, clearly prompted, lacked any form of emotion and blatantly said I should “not trust” specific candidates. That was the focal point of the message that ultimately became my focal point of the message, except instead of identifying with the caller and his plea it lead me to immediate mistrust the caller.

Clearly a marketing message gone wrong. I suspect I was not the caller’s target audience, I believe he was trying to shop for support from a still older audience but forgive me if you happen to disagree but I think this message will have been even more wrong for that older audience.

Let me explain.

If I was marketing to people of 50+ years of age I would think the following:

1)   They like or prefer to read message and evaluate the information to make a decision such as in a medium like a newspaper.

2)   Visual messages on television would likely to be effective as long as they meet the basic criteria of a relationship: genuine emotion, passion driven, sympathetic to the needs of the group whom the speaker is wishing to connect with.

3)   A spoken message could be effective met with the same criteria as a visual, interaction with a real individual likely to be extremely effective.

4)   I anticipate this group of people to be slightly resistant to technology.

5)   I would expect this group to have a high barrier of mistrust to which sympathetic language and genuine transference of emotion will be critical to overcome.

6)   I would also expect this segment to have some of the best overall understanding of the various political platforms so blatantly telling them to act a certain way without validation of why is likely going to be a major disconnect.

I think you can easily see why an automated, non-emotion, scripted phone call with the focal point of “not trusting” another candidate is likely to back fire. Could you imagine paying thousands of dollars for a campaign that not only perhaps doesn’t work but cripples your potential outcome?

This is why as a successful fitness professional it’s critical you identify your most likely customer. Close your eyes, picture them in your head and describe them to a fault.

What do they look like?

How old are they?

What are their interests?

What are their dislikes?

What are their potential problems or challenges?

What places do they frequent?

What items or services do they use?

Who do they associate with?

Drill down every detail even to the point of giving them a name, it’s so much more than just knowing if a certain segment of people are immediately accessible to you. Every communication you have with your audience you must be writing to ‘them’ using the language that makes sense for that relationship.

Just this weekend I asked, “if you were writing a letter to your member of parliament and your sweetheart would you use the same language?”

Obviously not, so are you using the right language to communicate with your desired audience?