At Activate, we know good design plays a significant role in the successful marketing of a small business, but it's obviously not the whole story.
When most people think about design, they think brochures, websites and branding. But design applies to everything about your business; great marketing strategies don’t just happen, they’re designed.
So we went on a mission to gather the best information from experts around the world on small business marketing. Here’s what we found:
Get the full marketing course straight from these experts delivered to your inbox weekly! Sign up here
The Top 60 Small Business Marketing Tips
1. Identify (and sell) to Your Tribes
In marketing terms, a ‘tribe’ are a group of customers with shared beliefs around a product or
brand. According to Matt Lee from Hubspot, Tribes are “individuals who are linked by their social interests.” They’re not only consumers; they can be avid supporters and promoters of your company if you engage well with them.
Look at your customer base and try to identify the ‘tribal groups’ amongst them. Tapping into these groups and tailoring your marketing strategies to align with their passions and beliefs is a great way to boost your business
Kelsey Libert at Fractl outlines four steps to tribal marketing success:
1. Define your tribe (demographics, core beliefs and where they ‘live’ online)
2. Tell a compelling story (match your content with their goals)
3. Create connections between tribe members with your content
4. Provide or support leadership within the tribe
2. Why Content Marketing Beats Advertising
A recent article by Kelsey looks into the relative effectiveness of Content Marketing vs. Advertising. Content Marketing is defined as “A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” (Quote courtesy of contentmarketinginstitute.com)
Kelsey found that good content was more effective at improving your website ranking and generates more leads. Good content is frequently shared, giving you a multiplier effect. Advertising isn’t generally shared unless it offers something of genuine value that users would like to share. Infographics and articles are in huge demand by publishers, and this content proliferates through different platforms such as social media and blogs, whereas advertising only appears once, in the position that you purchased.
3. Learn How to Attract Customers
What are the three most effective strategies for attracting customers? Kelsey Libert and her team surveyed 1000 people and here are the top three strategies:
1. Direct mail offering discounts, coupons or free trials.
2. Providing free content with relevant information.
3. A good ranking in search results
4. Create Sales Pages That Convert
Sales pages are dedicated web pages designed to sell. Amy Porterfield has great advice on the four key aspects you need to include in your sales page.
- Problem. Define the core problem that your product or service solves.
- Paint a Picture. Identify the steps your potential customers may have already taken to solve the problem.
- Put your story out there. Show empathy towards their past mistakes (bad product choices etc.)
- Pounce on objections. Use FAQ’s to resolve any lingering doubts they may have.
5. Grow a profitable Facebook Group
Another powerful marketing tool that Amy recommends is the private Facebook group. She says “ …private Facebook groups are an amazing way to galvanize your clients into a true community.” Generally these pages are used as a support tool for clients who have already purchased product. However they can be a very effective sales tool as well. Unlike Facebook pages, where your fans and potential customers are literally sidelined (their comments appear in a sidebar), Facebook groups offer a way to create proper conversations. In Amy’s Podcast, she speaks to Jill and Josh Stanton from screwtheninetofive.com, experts in using private FB groups as a subtle sales tool. Their advice? Provide free content, create a community and then enable opportunities for the members to easily access your paid products or services when they are ready.
6. Include Testimonials in your marketing
A simple technique that often gets overlooked is the power of the testimonial.
“Ultimately, you want your audience to trust you. To build that trust you need social proof. You need credibility. You need other people raising their hand and saying that they not only know and like you but that you played a crucial role in getting them results. That’s exactly what testimonials can do for you.” Amy Porterfield.
Testimonials should constantly be gathered, and Amy suggests you create a database where you can store them. They can come from anyone connected to your business, not just customers but peers, suppliers, etc. Facebook groups are a good source of positive feedback. When it comes down to it, people want to know what other people think of you.
7. Ask Every Customer These 5 Questions
John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing says customer feedback “…is one of the best ways to discover what you do that actually differentiates you from your competition.”
He has compiled a list of five questions you should ask your customers on a regular basis:
- What made you decide to hire us/buy from us in the first place?
- What’s one thing we do better than others you do business with?
- What’s one thing we could do to create a better experience for you?
- Do you refer us to other, and if so, why?
- What would you Google to find a business like ours?
John has another great question you can add to your customer survey—what other companies (in other business sectors) do they like? This will give you a great indication of who you can learn from or even seek out for strategic relationships.
8. Advertise. Advertise. Advertise
There’s no arguing that advertising can be an expensive proposition. But John Jantsch at DuctTape Marketing argues that advertising is still essential because it supports all your other marketing endeavours, brings exposure to your content and adds credibility to your message. Unlike other forms of marketing, advertising is a tool where you have complete control over timing, location and content.
9. Leverage Your Small Business Advantage
John outlines ten natural advantages that small companies have over large ones and asks the question “…are you leveraging your natural advantages?”
Small companies can be more nimble, offer personal service and more tailored products. Even large companies are adopting these ‘think small’ business practices to satisfy the needs of their customers.
10. Incorporate the Essentials
Having a company website is a no-brainer these days, but you need to make sure the investment is paying off by optimising your website for usability, search-friendliness (SEO), marketing and of course, helpful content. Some things to avoid? Tim recommends avoiding flash animations, background music and videos hosted on your website (much better to use the power of YouTube or Vimeo).
11. Move Your PR Campaign Online
Audiences are divided - traditional PR campaigns targeting mainstream media are less effective these days. Tim Reid from The Small Business Big Marketing Show recommends you target smaller but more engaged, boutique audiences via podcasts, Bloggers, YouTube, etc. Think of it as PR 2.0.
12. Be Contactable
By listing your company details in online directories, you ensure your business has a strong presence in online search results. Make sure you are present and that your contact information is up-to-date and accurate. It's usually free, easy to do and could gain you extra customers with little effort. It's also important that you and your staff are easily contactable.
13. Provide a Live Chat
Live Chat is a great tool for connecting with users who want a quick answer while they’re browsing your website and as Seth points out, live chat offers perfect timing for sales. Customers can interact directly with you, while they browse your site. It’s a hugely under-utilised tool for customer sales and service. Some platforms, such as purechat.com, even offer free basic packages.
14. Be Present on Instagram
Instagram have launched business accounts which give business owners access to promotion, contact and analytics tools within Instagram. This allows users to not only follow you; they can contact you direct within the app.
15. Use Events to Market Your Business
Although the online space dominates marketing initiatives these days, there is still plenty of scope for promotion in more traditional areas. Seth looks into how events can be an effective method for marketing your brand. There are three levels of commitment when it comes to events:
1. Networking events (which tend to be one on one relationship building opportunities)
2. Industry Conferences (not just your industry but the industry your clients are working in)
3. Hosted Event (a major commitment but an excellent way to establish leadership & credibility)
16. Make Discounting Work for You
Thijs de Valk at Yoast looks at the psychology of discounting. He says it's the thought of missing out that drives the most uptake of discounts and specials. A behavioural scientist, he’s found some deals work better than others. For example, people prefer to get 50% more of a product than save 33% on the original product.
17. Be Mobile Friendly
In his SEO blog, Thijs identifies the need for responsive design as one of the key factors in your website’s success. Google provides an online tool where you can test your site’s mobile ‘friendliness’. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ Another simple test is to resize your browser to approximate a mobile or tablet screen and see how it responds.
18. Develop Loyal Customers
“How do you get the people who have already bought something from you to buy something again?”
Thijs’s tips for creating loyal customers? Be active (Blog Posts, articles, social media) so your existing customers don’t forget you. Be prompt - answer email queries within 24 hours. Reward your customers and make them feel special - and you’ll find they reciprocate (more business, positive reviews, referrals).
19. Spy on Your Competition
Wondering what your competition are up to? Cornelia Cozmiuc offers some fantastic tips on how you can research (i.e. spy!) on your competitors using a collection of online tools such as brand.mention.com, a site where you can track any mention of your brand (or your competitors) on the web.
20. Segment Your Email Marketing
Your client list is a valuable resource, make sure it's up-to-date with your current addresses, mobile numbers and email addresses.
As Cornelia Cosmic explains in her blog, sending the same standard weekly or monthly newsletters to all your customers doesn’t cut it anymore. Your customers most likely fall into different categories, and you need to target each group with content customised to suit them.
21. Look for Keywords in New Places
“Find keywords semantically related to your niche, but not necessarily used by your competitors.”
What to do when everyone’s using the same keywords and the market is crowded? Cornelia’s tip is to look in new places for keywords.
- Photo sites like Shutterstock and Pixabay can be a great source for keywords, using the photo descriptions rather than the images themselves, as a keyword resource.
- Amazon, the premier selling site, is another great source of keywords, using the autocomplete feature to show you what people are seeking.
- Print publications related to your business can be a good source of keywords because the language used often difference from that found online.
- Wikipedia covers many topics and languages, making it another great avenue for keyword research.
22. Don’t Be Cheap
“Cheap is the last refuge for the marketer who can't figure out how to be better.”
Seth points out that large organisations can do cheap because they have scale and advanced processes. For the smaller enterprise, cheap invariably means reducing customer service to reduce costs and before you know it “Organizations panic in the face of the floor falling out from under their price foundation, and they often respond by becoming a shell of their former selves.”
23. Look for Patterns
“Human beings are pattern-matching machines. Changing our beliefs, though, is something we rarely do. It's far easier to sell someone on a new kind of fruit than it is to get them to eat crickets, regardless of the data you bring to the table.”
Seth identifies two business options for growth:
- Create a new, innovative product/service not seen before
- Provide a product/service that is familiar and recognised
Seth argues that while real innovation is important to our economy, ‘pattern’matching’ your offering to something that already exists gives customers a comfortable, recognisable product that will sell more readily.
24. Be Better, not Bigger
Is bigger always better? Seth suggests that while it might be better more investors, ‘bigger’ can be less beneficial for your customers, particularly in a service-based business. ‘Better’ should always take priority over ‘bigger’.
25. Use Google My Business
“Google My Business is a master dashboard that connects your business directly with customers, whether they’re looking for you on Search, Maps or Google+. Think of it as a master information hub from which you can manage all things Google."
Local SEO is important for bricks and mortar businesses who rely mostly on local custom. By adding your business information, location, images, keywords and selecting business categories, Brian shows how you can significantly improve your ranking in local search results.
26. Create Local Content
Following on from Google my Business, Brian’s next tip for improving local SEO ranking is by having excellent local content.
“Google’s ultimate goal is to provide searchers with the most relevant content as quickly as possible. To rank at the top, you need to think of yourself as the solution provider. And the solution you’re providing? Great content that answers search queries…”
The trick to creating this content, according to Brian, is to work backwards. Start with your potential users and their intentions (typically they want to do something, know something or find something), and then create the resource that answers these needs.
27. Engage With Your Community
“It takes a village to run a successful business, and it takes passion for community to make a business successful.”
For firms that rely on local custom, Brian says it's crucial that you and your staff engage with your community. Providing live chat on your website is proven way to engage with customers and provide customer service. Encouraging online reviews and contributing to local charities also help to build your reputation in the community.
28. Take Care of On-Page SEO
Brian has an information-packed infographic on his blog that shows the elements you need on your web page to make it rank well.
- Put your keyword at the beginning of your title tag
- Keep your URL short
- Include videos, images and diagrams
- Link to other (relevant) websites
- Make sure your page loads fast (Google downgrades slow loading pages)
- Post longer content (This increases user time spent on your site and improves ranking)
29. Write Content That People Care About
You wouldn't write just any content for your website right? Find out what your ideal customers are interested in and searching for, then create tailored content around it.
Brian has four tips to increase your website traffic:
- Find influential people In your niche
- Find out what these influencers care about
- Tailor content to these influencers and the subjects that they care about
- Include ‘share triggers’ in your content (give users something they will want to share)
30. Don't Be Afraid to Use YouTube
Video plays a huge part in today’s online experience. If you’ve created video content to promote your business, you need to make sure that content ranks well when potential customers are looking at video search results. The key, as Brian outlines in his tip, is ‘video keywords’. Google usually provides YouTube links in it’s search results with search terms like “How-to’, ‘Review', ‘Tutorial’ and of course, ‘video’. So build your content around these video friendly keywords and you will improve your rankings. Brian does emphasise the need to produce quality video because within YouTube; the best ranking videos are those that are watched most frequently and for the
longest duration. If your video is poor quality, viewers will move on, and your video will lose its ranking.
31. Use BuzzSumo to Improve Your Blog Writing
Neil Patel has a great set of tools and tips for improving your company blog posts. His favourite tool is BuzzSumo, a site that promises to “analyze what content performs best for any topic or competitor.” Just enter your blog topic into BuzzSumo and it gives you detailed analysis of that subject, to guide you on what will work best.
32. Use Social Media as a Sales and Service Tool
In his blog, Neil looks at ways you can leverage social media for improving business results. His suggestions include engaging the service Cayzu, which turns mentions and messages from social media users into helpdesk tickets which you can action straight away. This adds a valuable customer service component to your company’s social media presence.
33. Boost Your Online Presence Everywhere
For a new business, establishing yourself online is essential and for businesses with a local focus, social media is particularly effective. Neil’s online marketing tips include managing your social media process through a single portal called Buffer (https://buffer.com/). You can schedule when your posts are released and distribute them to all your social media platforms simultaneously.
34. Create a Statement of Value
Ryan has two simple exercises to help you define the value of your business:
- Define your customer’s before and after state.
- Creating your Statement of Value.
What is your potential customer’s position before they have your product/service, and what should it be afterwards? Once you define this state, you can create your Statement of Value, which can be used in all your marketing content.
Ryan provides examples of this Statement of Value, such as:
“Lego enables children of all ages to experience the joy and challenge of building something that is uniquely theirs.”
Your marketing content should emphasise whats ‘in it for the customer’.
35. Know What Your Business is About
A powerful lesson when running your business is knowing when to say no. As Ryan explains in his blog, many businesses fail because they take on too many good ‘opportunities’, without really having a good understanding of what their own business is about. It’s a bit of a cliche, but this is why a good mission statement is so important, as it defines what you do (and equally what you don’t do).
36. Be Different From Your Competitors
Ryan’s video blog on how to deal with competition starts with a simple observation—having competition is a very good sign that you’re in the right business. A compete lack of competition may well suggest that there isn’t actually a viable market for your product or service.
Ryan outlines three points of difference your product or service needs to have to succeed:
- A different flavour or approach to the others
- A new or distinctive feature
- A new or unique way to supply or deliver your product/service.
In the end, according to Ryan, it's all about having a product that adds value, giving your customers something that the competition don’t offer.
37. Tell a Story
Bernadette’s blog looks at the story-telling process that's integral to all marketing content. She concludes that storytelling that focuses on the customer and how they use your product is more engaging and relevant than a story about how your product is better or newer. Campaigns like ‘Shot on iPhone’ put the customer in the middle of the story. As Bernadette puts it:
“Your job is to show your customer how your product makes him the hero of his story.”
38. Speak When Your Customers are Listening
Businesses may be delivering their social media messages and online content into a void if they don’t take into account their customer’s schedules. Bernadette emphasises the need to communicate at times and places that suit your customer, not your company. She asks “When are
your customers listening?”
39. Measure the "Right" Data
Companies can get caught up in the hard data they gather as part of the sales process and start to believe this tells the whole story about their business. Bernadette urges business owners to look beyond this data and examine the other ‘transactions’ that take place. A salesperson may provide valuable advice that doesn’t immediately translate into a sale and therefore doesn’t ‘register’. However this transaction does have value by strengthening customer relationships and establishing credibility.
40. Use a Planner
In Josh’s video blog, his tip for taking your business to the next level is creating a 12-month planner. Make the challenge of growing your business more manageable by breaking it into monthly steps. This allows you to plan your strategy, delegate the workload and track your progress.
41. Build a Team the Right Way
Josh looks at the tricky process of bringing in new employees to grow your business. How do you fund this expansion without losing income? Josh says “ …the key is to make sure you only spend the cash you are netting to bring on a new hire. You don’t want to go into debt to do this.”
Crucially, you need to ensure your new recruit is an income-generating employee who is welltrained and ready to go.
42. Master These Two Activities
Josh boils down all the tips and suggestions for business success down to two crucial activities:
- Marketing
- Taking Action
Company owners can get bogged down with all the advice and tips, together with long to-do lists and operational tasks within their company. In doing so, they neglect the marketing aspect of their business, which is the only way to ‘get the needle moving’. Successful businesses activate market themselves, constantly trying out new strategies. They also take action (following through on sales leads and focusing on income generating tasks, not admin or procedural work.)
43. Use the Power of ‘Because’
In Belinda’s copywriting blog, she delves into the persuasive power of the word ‘because’, and why you should include it in your marketing copy. When you use ‘because’, you are providing a reason, and research has shown that persuasive arguments that include reasoning are much more powerful. But it's not enough to just say ‘because’! You need to follow with a reason that also encourages the reader or customer to say Yes. Here’s one of Belinda’s examples:
“Order now because we offer same-day shipping on orders before 2 pm!”
This gives readers a reason to order now and motivates them to act.
44. Write for Your Customer, Not for Your Business
Belinda writes that “Understanding your reader and what motivates them is the key to effective copywriting”. So why do people buy something and how does this influence the marketing copy you write?
Belinda explains that you need to dig deeper into the subconscious motivations of your audience, to find out what’s driving them. It may be a need for power, status or perhaps just social acceptance. The little voice inside them is not the rational voice; it's the one that speaks to their true feelings. When you appeal to this voice, you can win the customer’s trust and establish credibility.
45. Provide FREE Samples—It Works
Providing free samples of your product can be a very effective marketing technique says Belinda,
as long as it is done the right way. You need to make sure:
- Your free product sample reaches your target audience
- You include enough of your product to be useful.
- The recipient knows how to use your product.
- You make buying easy with a special offer or instructions on where to buy.
46. Text Your Customers
Frank Kern tried an experiment where he emailed potential customers who, for whatever reason, did not buy his product. He gave them the opportunity to text him if they had any problems or queries. As a result, he got a significant boost in sales. The reason it works? You offer potential customers a more personal response and texting is a frictionless communication medium that most people are very comfortable with.
47. Write Copy That Sells
To write copy that sells, Frank explains that the look is just as important as the content. Keep the text large and readable, sentences short and punchy. In the online space, people skim read, so memorable headings and sub-headings are crucial if you want to get your message across.
48. Turn ‘No’ into ‘Yes’
It's a fact of life in business that most potential customers will not buy your product. As Frank Explains in his blog post, that's normal human behaviour. We are taught from a young age to be responsible, don’t make hasty decisions, don’t buy on impulse. Frank’s technique for bringing these ‘no’ customers around is to track their behaviour and provide them with multiple opportunities to stay engaged. He uses the term ‘response indicators’ to describe the actions potential customers take before they are ready to buy. The classic example is taking a car for a test drive.
49. Create Great Presentations
Presenting at conferences or seminars is a great way to promote your business, but only if you make a good impression. Rand Fishkin at Moz has some great tips on how you can make your audience swoon. Some of the tips include:
- Don’t share tips or advice that more than 20% of your audience already know.
- Don’t allow your audience to read ahead on your powerpoint slides (they’ll stop listening to you)
- Create tension or anticipation, then resolve it.
50. Apply Human Behaviour to Your Marketing
In this blog post, Rand links to a video about an independent game creator, and how his experience can offer insights into marketing and human behaviour. Some key learning from the video:
- The more compressed information is, the further it travels (it's more shareable)
- Disproving opinions held by your customers will often bolster their belief in that opinion
- Companies and products are judged by their associations as much as by the quality of the product/company itself.
- Media tend to amplify existing beliefs rather than introducing new or more complex concepts.
As Rand points out, “ This is incredibly important for marketers, startups, and entrepreneurs. If you (or your product) have been defined in a certain way by the press, your fans, or a niche community, your best shot at earning additional attention is to leverage the associations you have rather than trying to create a nuanced, complex portrayal. Of course, much of the time, this may come at the cost of accuracy and holistic transparency.”
51. Make Your Content Accessible
Rand takes a look at content creation and ponders the question "... should we be writing only extremely focused, narrowly focused content for our specific target audience, or should we be trying to branch out and broaden so that we can reach a bigger audience or a new audience?”
In general, Rand believes a narrow, exclusive focus is counter-productive. The reasons?
- Your competitors are gunning for the same narrow market
- You minimise link opportunities from websites, press and blogs.
- You’re missing potential customers and influencers outside your normal sphere of influence.
His recommendations are to:
- Nail down the actual content goals with your team, your manager, or your client.
- Try and distribute those broad versus narrow versus hyper-specific content efforts.
- Establish some cadence, some channels, some of the promotion efforts that are going to fit the goal and the target audience.
- Use the right metrics to measure your progress against these goals.
52. Make Your Testimonials Work for You
Derek Halpern of Social Triggers looks at testimonials and how, if incorrectly managed, can damage your company’s reputation. As users, we are inherently sceptical of reviews, particularly when they seem to be overwhelmingly positive. In some cases, these reviews have indeed been proven to be fake, with disastrous results for the company concerned.
Derek suggests its almost never a good idea to get friends to do testimonials for you. Your audience will sooner or later make connections, and there goes your credibility.
Derek’s tip for good testimonials is to focus on specifics:
“ I encourage you to go deeper and focus on specific customers, specific problems, and help you provide an experience for your prospects that makes them say WOW.”
53. Take These Two Steps to More Sales
Derek has two simple steps that you need to take to grow your sales:
Step 1: Find A Big Problem People Will Pay To Fix…
Step 2: And get paid to fix it.
If your product or service doesn’t solve a customer’s big problem, then selling it is going to be a lot harder. But as Derek indicates in step 1, it has to be a problem that people will pay to get fixed. If they won’t (or can’t afford to) pay for your solution, then your product won’t sell.
54. Avoid the Pricing ‘Trade-Off Effect’
Derek looks at pricing and a simple technique to ensure you sell your product at the price you want. Instead of having one or two price tiers and continually haggling with your customers over discounts, Derek suggests you create a three or four tier price structure. Human nature ensures that most clients will opt for the middle tier pricing (which should be the rate you want), and they are less likely to ask for discounts as you’ve already provided them with price options.
55. Take Care of Your Greatest Business Asset
What is your most valuable business asset? According to Perry “The most valuable asset you can own is a well-maintained customer database.”
Perry maintains that your customer database is even more valuable than your product - as customers are harder to find and easier to lose. Your next most valuable asset? Your potential customer database. How good is your database? Do you have all their details and stay in regular
contact?
56. Apply the 80/20 Rule When Identifying Hot Prospects
Perry describes how a colleague following the 80/20 rule (where you focus on the top 20% of your customers who provide the most revenue), used this simple sorting method to identify hot prospects:
- Do they have the money?
- Do they have a bleeding neck? (i.e.,. do they need a problem solved urgently)
- Do they buy into your Unique Selling Proposition? (Is your offer unique and appealing to them?)
- Do they have the ability to say YES?
- Does what you sell fit their overall plans?
57. Adapt to Change
This blog post by Perry is not so much a tip as a warning: be ready to change your online strategy as more and more users switch to mobile platforms and app-based content browsing. Your website is a great tool for marketing but what happens when the users stop visiting? You need to be where the audience lives and today this means apps like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube.
58. Use Facebook Ads to Boost Local Business
Molly states that for local businesses “There’s no better way to promote your local business than using Facebook ads. Not only can you advertise on a small budget, turn the campaign on and off whenever you’d like (much different than a billboard or TV commercial), there’s also a social aspect…Your customers can help promote your business to their family and friends on Facebook, and we all know how effective word of mouth is.”
The reason Facebook local ads work so well, according to Molly, is the fact that the targeting is already done for you. You know where your customers live, and this makes it much easier to create a geographically specific campaign. The trick when creating your ad is to include local place names or similarly recognisable terms that will catch the user’s attention.
59. Launch a Podcast
Podcasting can take a lot of investment in time, resources and equipment, but if it succeeds, the spinoff benefits are immense. Molly explains the experience they had at Digital Marketer and the single most important factor in a podcast’s success—the launch.
Molly writes that “When you get the launch right — you can screw up a lot of things and still get tons of exposure on iTunes. The iTunes algorithm rewards podcasts that come out of the gates with lots of momentum and gives zero exposure to those that launch with no momentum.”
60. Find Your Target Market with Facebook
With over 1.6 billion users, you can definitely find your target market on Facebook. The reason Facebook is so powerful for marketing, according to Molly, is because it “ has more interest based data than anyone else in the world – and it’s about things that actually matter to us as marketers.” Audiences can be targeted by the usual demographics: Age, Gender, Location, Language. But with Facebook, you can create even more accurate campaigns through Detailed Targeting, which includes options such as behaviour and Interests to drill down to your desired audience.