Bart Caylor, President and Founder, Caylor Solutions. We’re a marketing agency committed to advancing brands that advance education.
As marketers, we pack our days with meetings and tasks to keep an endless flow of messaging going out. But being busy does not necessarily guarantee results. To boost their results, marketers must engage their audiences where they already are.
If you enjoy watching wildlife out in nature, you’ve probably learned that if you go to a water source you have more chances of catching a glimpse of the animals you enjoy. Watering holes like a stream, or even an artificial water source like a bird bath, attract animals daily as they come to get what they already need.
Instead of going out looking for wildlife, the wise nature lover positions themselves in a place where the animals will come to them. Like the avid nature watcher, the wise marketer places their marketing messages where the target audience is already going to be. So where are the “watering holes” where your audiences go to find community and get their daily information, inspiration, entertainment and guidance?
For every audience, there will be different answers to that question. However, there are two main categories of watering holes you need to identify and become a part of: digital and physical spaces.
Digital Watering Holes
Of course, the first places that come to mind here are the bigger social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and X, formerly Twitter. If your audience is younger, I recommend that you also explore digital platforms such as Discord and Twitch. Inside of each of these platforms, you’ll find watering holes where people of all ages, backgrounds and persuasions come to get their daily information, inspiration and entertainment. You can find communities on these platforms that form around hashtags and groups.
Digital platforms have been a tremendous boon for marketers of all industries. With digital watering holes, you won’t have to spend anything to hang out there. Plus, you can find these community spaces with people around the world without ever leaving your desk.
However, the real challenge to digital spaces is finding the community you’re trying to reach. Like the proverbial needle in a haystack, there are thousands upon thousands of digital spaces where your target audience could be hanging out.
So how do you know where your target audiences are hanging out online?
1. Let demographic data guide you. There is a lot of data on the internet about the demographics of the people who use the main platforms.
2. Start with the people you know. Once you’ve got an idea of the platforms you’ll use to reach your audience, ask people in your target group where they go online daily. You could organize focus groups to do this, survey your current customers (students, clients, etc.), or even talk to people you know personally who are in the target group.
3. Use hashtags to search for communities. Hashtags group together posts, tweets and community groups around whatever topic is in the hashtag. Search out a few hashtags that you think might be of interest to your target audience and see if you can find the watering holes.
Physical Watering Holes
Your audiences are not only online, they also come together with other members of your audience in physical spaces. Physical watering holes are the brick-and-mortar spaces where your audience goes to get that face-to-face interaction they can only get in the analog world. Here are some examples of physical watering holes:
• Barber shops.
• Boutique specialty shops (think record stores catering to hard core audiophiles).
• Community centers.
• Church groups.
• Sports teams.
• Clubs.
• Locally owned businesses.
• Food pantries.
• Neighborhood nonprofits.
Unlike digital spaces, it’s hard to be in many physical watering holes all at once. It will cost more in terms of funds as well as personnel and time to canvas these places and get your marketing messages there.
Another key factor you’ll want to keep in mind with physical watering holes (and to some extent digital spaces) is that there is often a gatekeeper, or influencer, that you need to get to know. These people can help get your message out to the community if you have a relationship with them.
While digital spaces don’t require a lot of footwork, to find physical watering holes, you’ve got to be willing to hit the streets and build real relationships with real people. Avoid the temptation to simply send out your sales team, enrollment officer or customer reps to meet your target audience. As the marketer, you also need to be around your target audience to observe their behaviors, their needs and their preferences.
When you have found the brick-and-mortar watering holes where your audience is hanging out, take advantage of their unique physical traits. Try print marketing channels like flyers, calendars, swag and brand merchandise. These kinds of print marketing channels are highly mobile, going with members of your target audience into all the other community hot spots they are a part of. They are very personal, allowing your brand to be the expression of a person’s individual identity within their peer group.
In my opinion, having a marketing presence in physical watering holes like the ones above tends to make a greater impact on the target audience as the space is more intimate and focused on the individual members of the community you’re reaching out to.
Conclusion
There’s an old thought experiment: If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound? Of course, beyond its philosophical complexities, this is also significant for marketers. If you’re making noise, constantly getting your messaging out there, but there’s no one present to consume the content, did you really accomplish anything?
To be effective, you’ve got to place your messaging in places where your audience is already going to get their information, inspiration, entertainment or guidance. In these spaces, messaging isn’t an interruption, it’s what they came for!
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