So much of our marketing starts backwards.

Here’s a pretty common scenario:

We get a call from a vendor. She’s perky and interesting. We set a time for follow up. She’s going to hit us with her best pitch and a demo.

The date and time arrive, and she calls again. She sets up a screen share so that we can see the desktop of her computer, and she launches into her PowerPoint. Then we get this awesomely cool demo of her new product.

It’s pretty amazing. It’s one of these website popup things that offers to help visitors to your website. With it, visitors can have their questions addressed and their concerns alleviated, and the tool can schedule an appointment.

What’s really cool about this new tool is that instead of just offering helpful information, it does something you’ve never seen before. This clever tool jumps off the screen and seizes control of your prospective client’s fingers. It forces her to enter her credit card information and send you most of her money. This technology is amazing!

Okay, okay, maybe I was exaggerating a little about the taking control of her fingers and sending you all of her money part. But it’s still a cool tool. She’s selling a marketing tactic that might useful to you.

Much of our marketing originates with a call like this. These sales reps offer interesting and helpful ideas. It’s not unusual for us to be impressed and jump on one and run with it.

The big idea might involve buying leads, running advertisements on TV or radio, buying listings on directories, or placing pay-per-click advertising. Of course, you also get calls about search engine optimization and website development. The callers are relentless, and the ideas are abundant.

Unfortunately, starting your marketing with a tactic is a disaster. Tactics are the end of your marketing plan, not the beginning.

Slow down. Don’t get caught up in the hype and rush to buy something. Tactics need to wait. You’ve got work to do.

Starting with a tactic, without considering the audience or the message, invariably results in wasted money. You end up spending lots of money executing on the tactic without having any measurable impact on your audience.

The Right Place to Start Your Marketing

The better place to start is at the beginning. Start with a focus on your audience. You want to put yourself in the shoes of your audience member. Tactics are the result of thinking like your audience member thinks.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re targeting referral sources in the haircare industry. You’d like to generate more referrals from hairstylists who service the clientele that you target. Based on your experience, you know that your ideal client talks about her legal issues with her hairstylist. You know that the hairstylist is in an excellent position to send business your way.

Instead of starting out with a marketing tactic, let’s zero in on the hairstylist and back-step plan the way to delivering the right message at the right time in the right way.

Let’s figure out the best approach to reaching that segment of your audience. Let’s figure out what we need to say, how we need to say it, and when we need to say it. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the hairstylist and think about when she receives messages, how she receives messages, and what impact any particular message might have.

Of course, you don’t know that much about hairstylists, yet. You’re not sure precisely how to influence them. You need information before you figure out what approach would be most successful. What’s the best way to get information about your audience?

The best source of information about your audience is your audience. You need to approach some representative members of the audience and get to know them. You need to ask them how to best reach them. You need to find out what messages will hit their sweet spot. You need to figure out, by listening to them, what would be the best tactics to employ to achieve your goals.

If you’re not willing to invest the time and energy to understand the audience, then you are guaranteed to waste your time and money on a tactic intended to reach them. When we fail to understand the audience, we get sucked up by salespeople offering tactics. We’re like pigs on the way to slaughter.

You’ve got to invest in understanding your audience. That’s the only way to avoid wasting your marketing dollars.

Improving Your Understanding of Your Audience

Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. In our example, you need to be the hairstylist. Think the thoughts of the hairstylist. Think about her day. Think about her life. Think about where she gets her information. Think about what she enjoys doing, watching, being, and appreciating. Think about what it would take to influence her to take the action you want her to take. Stay in her shoes for a while.

With your audience, you might find that knowing more about you is critical to the willingness to make a referral. You might find that knowing more about your ideal clients so that you better understand their problems is the essential element. You don’t know what they think until you get to know some of them and start thinking of the world the way they think of the world.

[ While I have you here, I wanted to remind you that you can get the latest articles delivered to your inbox a week before they go up on the web. Just one email per week. Sign up here. ]

I, of course, have no idea what you’re going to discover as you interview your target audience. You’ll find some interesting and unique things that you didn’t expect. That’s inevitable.

As you interview your audience, what you’re not likely to find is that the tactic you were most recently called about by a salesperson is the tactic that will work best to reach that audience. You’re not likely to find that the latest shiny object is the ideal solution to your problem. Starting with the pitch from a salesperson is the wrong way to go about selecting a tactic.

The right way to select a marketing tactics is to start with the audience. Figure out what they need, how they need it, and what will affect them and influence them, and then employ those tactics. Spend some time in their shoes, and you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t.