Clients expect these tasks to be done more efficiently and effectively than they could with internal talent alone. SEO primarily for DTC brands. PR outreach for the IT space. Social media ads for clothing and beauty brands. Blog writing for B2B software companies. You get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s possible to have both types of expertise, but you’re probably stronger in one than the other. In that case, audience research can help close the gap. If you\u2019re a tactical expert, use audience research to better understand your would-be client\u2019s audience. If you\u2019re a domain expert, audience research will help inform your work for that would-be client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But closing that gap needs to happen fast. When you join the request for proposal (RFP) process, you don\u2019t get the in-house luxury of spending 90 days onboarding into the role. You can\u2019t punt on understanding the client\u2019s audience later. You\u2019re supposed to understand it now, or you\u2019ll lose the bid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most RFP processes have three key stages: making a good first impression, dazzling them with a solid pitch, and making the case for why you\u2019re the best long-term partner, often through follow-up answers to questions and requests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe you got an email from the in-house marketing team. Or you got connected via an intro and now you\u2019re setting up a call with the brand to discuss their needs. In this initial contact you need to highlight your ability to reach their audience. Start strong with data that makes an impression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it\u2019s a B2B client, there\u2019s a good chance their target persona has a particular set of job titles or descriptions (the kind you’d find in a LinkedIn profile’s description). Let\u2019s say the client makes food-logging software. A key buyer persona is nutritionists who will both use the app themselves and evangelize it to their own clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s walk through how to shine in front of your software client:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Run the SparkToro query: Uses these words in their bio: nutritionist<\/u><\/a>.<\/strong> (I made that query free for you!) Take a peek at the Hidden Gems<\/strong>. The top high-affinity sites tend to be obvious ones. Nutritionists often visit EatingWell.com<\/u><\/a>, marketing directors visit AdAge.com<\/u><\/a>, software engineers visit Docker.com<\/u><\/a>. None of those will be surprising to the people who sell to folks in those roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amy Gorin\u2019s website, Avocadu<\/a>, and ClinCalc.com<\/u><\/a> are two “Hidden Gem” websites for nutritionists. These websites may be lesser-known, but they have high affinity-to-traffic ratio among nutritionists! By name dropping these websites as potential sources of influence\/outreach targets, you’ll show the client you know their field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (And since I brought them up, some Hidden Gem websites for marketing directors are Undertone.com<\/u><\/a> and Privy.com<\/u><\/a>, and for software engineers, TutorialKart.com<\/u><\/a> and FlavioCopes.com<\/u><\/a> hit the spot.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another query type to try? <\/strong>\u201cSearches for the keyword: <pain point>.\u201d This could work well for just about any industry. When someone needs a solution, they\u2019re searching Google for the pain point. Insomniacs might search for \u201canxiety sleep,\u201d the age-conscious for \u201canti-aging cream,\u201d and savvy marketers for \u201ccustomer retention<\/u><\/a>.\u201d (Yup, that last suggestion is another free query!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, scroll down the Overview page to see which social networks nutritionists use more and less frequently than the average web user. Apparently, nutritionists have a predilection for Quora, followed by LinkedIn, Instagram, and Reddit. They use Twitter\/X less frequently than the average web user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Follow that up with Apps & Networks > Productivity Apps<\/strong> to see which tools nutritionists use in their day-to-day work. WordPress, Grammarly, StackExchange, Microsoft Office, and even OpenAI (the host domain for ChatGPT) are popular tools for nutritionists. Content creation, nutrition research, presentations\/graphics, and the creation of client plans all fit into these tool needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also check out popular apps\/networks in Entertainment, Lifestyle, Finance, Sports, and E-commerce for additional insight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d go to Websites > Press & Media<\/strong> to see if there are any major surprises here. Yahoo is the top media site. It might be worth going to the Yahoo Nutrition section<\/a> right before your exploratory call to see if anything in diet & nutrition news is an opportunity worth surfacing on the call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then I\u2019d go to the YouTube Channels and look at what\u2019s popular: MyFitnessPal, NutritionJobs, ASPEN. Check those channels to see which videos have the most views and what’s trending lately. Insider knowledge of your client’s audience will, undoubtedly, make you look like a great consulting fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d also check out the popular Subreddits\u2014\/r\/nutrition, \/r\/loseit, and \/r\/rcats (fun!) \u2014 and I\u2019d look for the popular podcasts\u2014Nutrition Facts with Dr. Greger, Mayo Clinic, and Health Discovered. All of these are worth a peek before that exploratory call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, go to the Keywords > Search Keywords<\/strong> tab. You\u2019ll find the search terms that nutritionists are searching for. Looks like they\u2019re often searching for information regarding RD and ACSM certifications, as well as the Nutrition Focused Physical Exam (suggesting there’s many aspiring nutritionists looking to get into the field\u2014another potential opportunity for your client).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now pop over to Trending Keywords<\/strong>. These are the popular search terms over the past quarter\u2014you can learn, quite literally, what has recently been top of mind for them. Lots of food types! At the time of publication, nutritionists have been searching for white nectarine nutrition (perhaps in preparation for stone fruit season?), the food ingredients that act as emulsifiers or that bind liquids together like in a salad dressing, and chicken recipes for the slow cooker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You now have a superb, holistic picture of the client\u2019s target audience: behaviors, demographics, and sources of influence. You know what they\u2019re thinking about and where they\u2019re hanging out online. In <15 minutes, you already have a solid sense of the audience they serve (and that you can help them reach).<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might want to ask your would-be client: “Where have you focused recent marketing efforts?<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n If they focus on paid\/performance marketing, you can think about the channels, platforms and creators you learned about in your SparkToro research and suggest any of those as potentially fruitful retargeting, advertising, or sponsorship opportunities. If they lean into organic search, social, or content marketing, you might suggest trending keywords, topics from subreddits and YouTube, or particular social influencers as potential investments\/opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To make sure you come up with truly great ideas for the next stage of the RFP process, make sure to ask:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll want to know these answers because:<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this point, you know the scope of work. You know the client\u2019s biggest pain points, and you might have a general sense of their budget. Now it’s time to showcase relevant case studies and bring fresh, specific ideas to their campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can\u2019t tell you exactly how to build your pitch deck, but I’ll share my point of view as an in-house marketer who’s been on the receiving end. The best pitches include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recent, relevant case studies. <\/strong>You don’t need many. In fact, readiness to go into detail about even just two case studies is great. Recency is good because it shows likelihood that I (the client) will work with this particular team who worked on the campaign (vs. seeing a years-old case study that likely came from employees who have since moved on). And relevance is good because I want to see case studies of businesses\/brands similar to mine or audiences similar to mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Representation from the actual day-to-day team. <\/strong>There\u2019s nothing worse than sitting in a pitch meeting with only senior executives from the agency. I know I won’t work with those executives every day. I know that when I fire off an email, it\u2019ll be the account representative who responds\u2014and that\u2019s perfectly fine. But a pitch meeting isn\u2019t the place to have your fanciest people show off the whole team\u2019s great ideas. It\u2019s where you show off what it\u2019s like to work with you and how excellent it is (in large part due to those great ideas). So make sure that account rep gets a seat at the table. I want to meet the people who will run the strategy and<\/em> the day-to-day of my campaigns, and I\u2019m not the only would-be client who feels this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At least one genuinely good, usable idea.<\/strong> A good, usable idea shows some creativity, has a strategy for how it\u2019ll get executed, and offers guidance on how success will be tracked. I\u2019ve sat in on a bunch of PR pitch meetings where the campaign itself was creative and impressive. Ambitious, really. But when I asked about execution, it became clear that the account executives would be relying on my network for contact information, or that the scope of work only includes PR creative\u2014and outreach would be a separate cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (And look, if you\u2019re a PR agency who charges separately for outreach, it\u2019s not my place to tell you how to bill your clients. But you would be wise to be upfront about this or else you\u2019ll risk souring the relationship with the client.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n How do you source intel to generate that first, fantastic, usable idea? Audience research, my friend. Look deeply into the client\u2019s audience to better understand what you\u2019d be working with, then use that intel (and the stats data that can prove audience affinity) to hone your idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are a couple suggestions for what to do next…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Head over to Similarweb.com<\/a> and type in the client\u2019s website to get a sense of who their competition would be. Similarweb will show similar websites and potential competitors. While this might not yield a list of the true competition, it gives you a sense of the other websites\/brands that the client\u2019s audience also visits. If they\u2019re not direct competitors, it\u2019s likely that they share an audience. And if it\u2019s the same audience, it\u2019s a good source of intel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the client\u2019s website doesn\u2019t get enough traffic to provide meaningful insights, try entering the website of a better-known competing website or one that shares the same audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you have that list of competing websites, go to those websites and take note. What are these products? How do they position their products? What\u2019s their content strategy? Have they gotten any significant press lately? You can think about what your client can do better than them (with your help, of course!), or even look for opportunities for co-marketing (if they\u2019re a non-competitor with the same audience).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s say the client is an ecommerce business and their competitor is DTC plant company TheSill.com. You can run a SparkToro search for the audience that visits the website: thesill.com<\/u><\/a>.<\/strong> (Another free query!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can see the other visited websites, the keywords that this audience also searches for (like “bird of paradise indoors” and “island pine tree!”), and their demographics. Of course, you can also see the social networks their audience frequently uses (and uses less frequently), and their favorite YouTube channels, podcasts, Subreddits, and social accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You could be looking for opportunities for creator\/influencer marketing, partnering with a similar, non-competitive brand (or co-marketing), social accounts to improve your ad targeting, or publications and people for media outreach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-14-at-10.28.35%E2%80%AFPM-1024x576.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nHow to make a good first impression on your introductory call<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Step 1: Analyze the key target buyer with a SparkToro search.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-9.09.40%E2%80%AFPM-1024x573.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 2: Get a sense of which platforms the target audience uses.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-9.11.27%E2%80%AFPM-1024x325.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-9.12.17%E2%80%AFPM-1024x554.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 3: Discover the influential content to this audience.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-9.13.15%E2%80%AFPM-1024x591.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 4: Learn what else the audience is searching for.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-9.13.59%E2%80%AFPM-1024x494.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 5: Prepare your notes for that introductory call.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Dazzle them with an audience-research-backed pitch.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Run a quick competitor analysis.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-9.15.01%E2%80%AFPM-1024x579.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nUncover underrated opportunities, or Hidden Gems.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-9.16.19%E2%80%AFPM-1024x626.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-9.16.54%E2%80%AFPM-1024x527.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-9.18.21%E2%80%AFPM-1024x740.png\")
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