Peter Winick argues that targeting by soft traits like risk aversion and growth mindset is harder than demographics but far more effective for reaching the right audience. Demographics are easy to find. The real work is naming the psychological attributes your ideal customer actually has, then finding where those people show up.
Hi there, it's Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And there's an old adage that holds true because there's truth to it that says that, you know, the soft stuff is the hard stuff. And that really refers to soft skills, communication skills, presentation skills, negotiation skills, etc., versus more technically oriented skills, computer programming, etc. And I think that a piece of that adage actually holds true when it relates to marketing as an author, as a thought leader, as an expert. What do I mean by that? Well, we live in an age today where we can find the demographics of pretty much anything that we're looking for in a few clicks of a button, right? If we wanted to know the demographics of someone at a certain income level that lives in a certain area that is male, female, educated to a certain degree, whatever the case is, click, click, click, boom, that's served up to us pretty quickly. I would call those sort of the hard traits. Of your client avatar. Now, the reality is the hard traits are only one component of your buyer avatar, of your client avatar. There are also soft traits, and those are really much more difficult and nuanced to find. What might a soft trait be? It might be someone is risk-averse, someone has a growth mindset. It might be that someone is an evolved leader. They're a strategic thinker. Things that don't show up when you go onto your typical site and look to click a box or click a button. So again, if the soft stuff is the hard stuff, what can you do from a marketing perspective to clearly articulate the soft traits of your buyers and then find them and locate them and meet them where they are? As usual, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.
