Originally I was going to talk about building a website, but I decided instead to talk about something a little more important.
Find Your Target Audience
The problem I see all too often with magicians and other artists trying to make it as solo entrepreneurs is that they make no attempt to figure out who their product/service is for. We live in an era where the market is more specialized than ever and traditional means of advertising and marketing are swiftly becoming obsolete, but no one asks the really important questions first.
As of writing, The Lone Ranger is the biggest financial bomb in Hollywood. It opened at number one at the box office, but it couldn't hold onto it for long and started slipping down the line quickly as word of mouth sunk it. The core problem with the movie? The producers at no point seemed to ask themselves who the movie was for. The Lone Ranger was an iconic Western story about justice and decency vs. corruption. The title hero used silver bullets to remind himself that life was precious and violence was a last resort. It was a good old-fashioned, two-fisted heroic slice of Americana. And the movie spent it's whole running time thumbing its nose at that premise. They turned Tanto into a loon, the Ranger himself into a barely competent "sleeping giant" and made the plot overly convoluted because hey! It worked for Christopher Nolan! It spent 90 minutes deriding its source material. Who was the target audience here? Fans of the old TV show aren't going to appreciate the pointless amount of grit shoveled into the script, nor will they like seeing their youthful memories spit upon so disrespectfully. Fans of Westerns hated it because it wasn't a Western, it was just another Pirates of the Caribbean sequel with trains instead of boats. Action fans probably don't want to see all the pointless faffing about considering there actually aren't that many big set-piece-based action sequences, and most of those were already shown in the trailer anyway. And that's to say nothing of the implicit racist and sexist imagery that's going to irritate a lot of other people.
No one at Disney stopped to ask themselves who this movie was for. And it's the same mistake 90% of magicians make.
I recall a few months ago sitting in on one of my father's boot camps about marketing, lead generation, and building a reliable client base. One of the hand-outs talked about psychographics, the different categories of buyers in the market based on the psychological needs they're trying to fulfill. One of the participants was a jewelry seller who said she didn't want to pick just one or two psychographics to sell to because it would be a shame to leave all the others out. You know what that's called? Desperation. The brutal truth of the matter is that no one can sell to everyone. You have to narrow your market.
That's not to say that it's impossible to find yourself with broad appeal. When Hasbro launched The Hub network, it's purpose was to create shows that could sell toys. To sustain the network, they needed shows that parents would be okay with their kids watching. To revive My Little Pony they got Lauren Faust (of the Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and The Iron Giant) to be the executive producer. She created a show parents would want to watch too. The result, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, ended up connecting with an entire periphery demographic of young men through good writing, likable characters, stylish animation, and an infectious charm. At this point, if you don't know what bronies are, you have officially been living under a rock for the last 3 years.
But there's a caveat here. Neither Faust nor Hasbro ever imagined that this periphery demographic would take off. To their credit, they saw an opportunity and ran with it. But they didn't bet the farm on it happening in the first place.
So now consider yourself. What are you good at? What material do you perform consistently well? What sort of people does this appeal to? What would your ideal client look like? Where does that sort of person go? What circles do they typically run in? Are they looking for escapism? Prestige? Novelty?
This is a process that one rarely gets right the first time. It took me a while to find demographics that work for me, and the same is true of most working pros. You have to know when to quit on one pursuit if there is no perceivable pay-off at the end of the initial slog. If pursuing one demographic/psychographic is going nowhere, cut your losses and find another one.
You have to proactively get out there and find these people. Don't just put your videos on YouTube and expect money and groupies to come to you. But don't shotgun either by buying newspaper ads indiscriminately. Again, you have to target your market to places that you know your market is going to see it.
Sit down right now and ask yourself all of those questions. I want you to be able to envision your ideal client in front of you by the time you finish. With that done, we'll talk next week about how to be remarkable enough that they'd actually want to give you their business.
Find Your Target Audience
The problem I see all too often with magicians and other artists trying to make it as solo entrepreneurs is that they make no attempt to figure out who their product/service is for. We live in an era where the market is more specialized than ever and traditional means of advertising and marketing are swiftly becoming obsolete, but no one asks the really important questions first.
As of writing, The Lone Ranger is the biggest financial bomb in Hollywood. It opened at number one at the box office, but it couldn't hold onto it for long and started slipping down the line quickly as word of mouth sunk it. The core problem with the movie? The producers at no point seemed to ask themselves who the movie was for. The Lone Ranger was an iconic Western story about justice and decency vs. corruption. The title hero used silver bullets to remind himself that life was precious and violence was a last resort. It was a good old-fashioned, two-fisted heroic slice of Americana. And the movie spent it's whole running time thumbing its nose at that premise. They turned Tanto into a loon, the Ranger himself into a barely competent "sleeping giant" and made the plot overly convoluted because hey! It worked for Christopher Nolan! It spent 90 minutes deriding its source material. Who was the target audience here? Fans of the old TV show aren't going to appreciate the pointless amount of grit shoveled into the script, nor will they like seeing their youthful memories spit upon so disrespectfully. Fans of Westerns hated it because it wasn't a Western, it was just another Pirates of the Caribbean sequel with trains instead of boats. Action fans probably don't want to see all the pointless faffing about considering there actually aren't that many big set-piece-based action sequences, and most of those were already shown in the trailer anyway. And that's to say nothing of the implicit racist and sexist imagery that's going to irritate a lot of other people.
No one at Disney stopped to ask themselves who this movie was for. And it's the same mistake 90% of magicians make.
I recall a few months ago sitting in on one of my father's boot camps about marketing, lead generation, and building a reliable client base. One of the hand-outs talked about psychographics, the different categories of buyers in the market based on the psychological needs they're trying to fulfill. One of the participants was a jewelry seller who said she didn't want to pick just one or two psychographics to sell to because it would be a shame to leave all the others out. You know what that's called? Desperation. The brutal truth of the matter is that no one can sell to everyone. You have to narrow your market.
That's not to say that it's impossible to find yourself with broad appeal. When Hasbro launched The Hub network, it's purpose was to create shows that could sell toys. To sustain the network, they needed shows that parents would be okay with their kids watching. To revive My Little Pony they got Lauren Faust (of the Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and The Iron Giant) to be the executive producer. She created a show parents would want to watch too. The result, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, ended up connecting with an entire periphery demographic of young men through good writing, likable characters, stylish animation, and an infectious charm. At this point, if you don't know what bronies are, you have officially been living under a rock for the last 3 years.
But there's a caveat here. Neither Faust nor Hasbro ever imagined that this periphery demographic would take off. To their credit, they saw an opportunity and ran with it. But they didn't bet the farm on it happening in the first place.
So now consider yourself. What are you good at? What material do you perform consistently well? What sort of people does this appeal to? What would your ideal client look like? Where does that sort of person go? What circles do they typically run in? Are they looking for escapism? Prestige? Novelty?
This is a process that one rarely gets right the first time. It took me a while to find demographics that work for me, and the same is true of most working pros. You have to know when to quit on one pursuit if there is no perceivable pay-off at the end of the initial slog. If pursuing one demographic/psychographic is going nowhere, cut your losses and find another one.
You have to proactively get out there and find these people. Don't just put your videos on YouTube and expect money and groupies to come to you. But don't shotgun either by buying newspaper ads indiscriminately. Again, you have to target your market to places that you know your market is going to see it.
Sit down right now and ask yourself all of those questions. I want you to be able to envision your ideal client in front of you by the time you finish. With that done, we'll talk next week about how to be remarkable enough that they'd actually want to give you their business.