I have an irrational fear.

It’s stickers. 

Ya know: the things kindergarteners are given as prizes for a job well done?

The ones that feature flowers, fish, Disney characters, and totally other totally non-threatening little things?

Yeah, those.

I bet even in the deepest depths of your imagination, that’s not what you thought I was about to say. 

Snakes? Sure. 

Deep, dark depths of the ocean where light has never touched? Okay, fine. 

(I’m actually a total ocean baby and would NEVER find the ocean terrifying…but that’s a train of thought for another day.)

But stickers?!

Tbh, it’s kind of a weird one. 

And despite many hours of sitting around a campfire with a mug full of hot cocoa with loved ones trying to psycho-analyze where it comes from, the fact remains: 

I hate stickers. For no particular reason. 

And here’s the thing:

Your audience? 

They hate things too. For no particular reason. 

Maybe it’s spiders. Maybe it’s snakes. 

Or maybe it’s the word “bespoke” — which they think is a kind of ambiguous catch-all term that means very little and says even less. 

Which is totally fine and dandy and not at all a problem. 

Until you slap the word “bespoke” all over your branding, thinking it’s the perfect little word nugget to describe the uniqueness of what you do. 

Do you get this metaphor? 

You don’t have to use the word bespoke. 

You don’t have to have an audience that hates the word bespoke. 

But your audience hates something. 

They’re really freaking sick down to their core of something. 

And just like you can’t tell I’m a sticker hater just by looking me in the eyes…

(Unless you can — in which case you should find some way to mass-market your mind reading skills.)

You can’t always tell what your audience hates through the use of logic. 

Or through guesswork. 

Or through thinking “ya know, I’ve worked with this audience so long that I basically know them better than they know themselves.” 

Ya gotta talk to them. 

Ya gotta find out those secret things that they love. 

That they hate. 

That they dream about in the deepest depths of their soul where no one can see…

And use that deeper-than-deep knowledge to drive your marketing efforts. 

Because the stuff that’s kind of embarrassing to talk about? (Like, oh I don’t know, just thinking of something random here — a lifelong irrational fear of sticky things!!!)

The stuff that makes them nervous laugh in a “you are totally going to find this so embarrassing” kind of way?

The stuff that makes them feel like they’re absolutely banana bonkers for thinking it, and even more abso-fruitly-lutely bonkers for saying it out loud? 

That’s the good stuff. 

Cheers,

Regan 

P.S.: this is where face-to-face (or screen-to-screen) convos come in. Because if you — or even better, your marketing pro — can dig deep into these conversations, that’s how you get to the deepest, most conversion-rich depths of the marketing ocean. 

Want to chat about how to deepify your marketing using real insights from your real customers? Click here and send me a “hey, wanna sync up for a quick sec?” straight to my inbox.