Year One Labs

Often, a company will undertake marketing activities because they feel like they should. I spend a lot of time writing marketing content for conferences, startups, and other projects, and I’m usually willing to do it. But I always have three questions I require that the other person answer before I start. I realized this a few years ago, and if I had to teach one lesson about marketing, this would be it.

The three questions are:

• Who’s the audience?
• What specific action do you want them to take?
• Why will they take that action? What’s their motivation?

Some examples:

• This sign is for hotel guests to get them to leave the building fast or they will burn to death.
• This blog post is for realtors to get them to attend this conference or they will price houses badly and lose money.
• This interview is for politicians so that they will look into a bad piece of legislation and change it to avoid being voted out of office next election.
• This newspaper article is for hockey fans to encourage them to watch tonight’s game or they will miss an amazing moment in sporting history.
• This Google ad is for single moms to convince them they should try my babysitting service so they can have an evening at a movie and relax.

In my experience, few people are disciplined enough to ask these three questions. They do a press release because it’s the thing to do (and since that means it’s aimed at everyone, with no particular goal, it usually sucks.) On the other hand, asking these three questions does several things:

• It makes your message targeted and to the point. You can write in a tone your audience will appreciate.
• You can test it more easily. Rather than saying, “please proofread this,” you can ask reviewers who they think it’s for and what one point it makes. Better yet, you can find reviewers who are in your target audience and ensure that it communicates the right message.
• It allows you to segment the audience. Compared to other people, did single moms try the service more?
• It allows you to measure the effectiveness. How many tickets did you sell? Did all guests get out of the building alive?
• It allows you to understand their motivations. When we survey the moms, was an evening of relaxation their top motivation? Or was there another reason for it? Did the politicians act to protect their seat, or because they genuinely thought the legislation was flawed?

Being able to analyze the results of the activity tells you whether you should do it more, abandon it, or adjust your strategy to a different audience, action, or motivation. It’s the basis of a lean approach to marketing, and these three questions force a marketer to tell you the scope and hypothesis you’re testing.