Two questions come up first in almost every conversation I have with a business owner: Who is your audience? And what are you trying to say?
Take a second and see if you can answer those about your own business right now. If you can, great! You’re ahead of more people than you’d think. If you can’t, what follows should help you get there.
I gave a version of this as a talk recently for Bounce Innovation Hub’s Synthe6 Polymer Cluster Cohort, and wanted to write it up here too. My entrance into marketing was a little different than most, and it’s part of why I keep circling back to these same two questions no matter who I’m working with or what industry they’re in.
Where This Started
I have a degree in medical illustration, which means I am formally trained in visually communicating complicated information to diverse audiences. Early projects included illustrations for medical journals and museums. The professors drilled the habit into us to ask those same questions at the start of every project: who is your audience? What are you trying to say?
This is the common thread throughout my professional career.
My first job out of school was with a law firm creating visuals for the courtroom. Below are a couple of stills from one of those animations, made for a court case. The audience in this case was a jury of varying levels of education and backgrounds. We needed to effectively communicate that the crane operator was unable to see the workers on the deck below, which led to damages.
I love that I get to work with so many different types of professionals including doctors, lawyers, and scientists. They have the facts and expertise, and I bring the storytelling skills that translate this complex information to all types of audiences. Later in my career, I designed a promo video for a traveling exhibit funded by the National Science Foundation, aimed at the general public, including non-English speakers and both adults and children.
The Gap I Found When I Started Aducate
I started Aducate as a branding agency for small business owners. But I found that people needed help zooming out. They couldn’t answer those two main questions. And the lack of clarity around who their audience was or what message they wanted to share meant that any logo or website I built for them was just a band-aid on a larger problem. This lack of clarity was impacting their overall strategy and growth.
I found that they couldn’t answer those two questions because they were overwhelmed, frustrated, and too close to the problem to see things objectively. Many had already worked with other marketing agencies in the past, but things kept falling flat.
What they really needed was a thinking partner. Someone who could give them the space to hear their thoughts out loud, because their heads had become too cloudy.
There are marketing partners out there who can build and run your campaign once you know what it needs to say. I’m the step before that. For people who still need to define what that message is, while staying in control of the strategy, and who aren’t interested in handing things off indefinitely.
What Aducate Does
Aducate focuses more on the psychology of marketing and business strategy. We take an analytical approach to creativity, combining art, science, and strategy. This works regardless of industry or stage because it’s more about finding internal clarity and making intentional decisions. That insight supports business decisions and tactical marketing strategies alike.
You get sharper at reading your target audience (including customers and investors. And that means your messaging lands because it’s actually calibrated to them, not what you assumed they wanted.
Our services teach you how to creatively solve your own problems. Our strategies help you build confidence under uncertainty. You’ll learn how to limit backtracking and wheel spinning because you’ll see signals and have a grounded way to test those observations.
You regain control by getting out of reactive decision making. You get better at making decisions without needing to over-research. We help you get out of analysis paralysis mode.
Our larger goal is to avoid dependency on us.
Two Examples of This in Action
That sounds nice, but what does it look like practically? I’ve worked through this exact process with clients ranging from a New Orleans tech MSP untangling fear-based messaging that was scaring off the wrong-fit leads, to a local land developer whose new B2C real estate division was getting lost inside a nationwide franchise brand. Both cases started the same way: a landscape analysis to ground-truth what was really happening, followed by a phased plan built around their own clarity and pace.
You can read the full breakdown of both in the case studies on my website.
Where Do You Go From Here
Your next step is to ask yourself those two questions. Who is your audience? And what are you trying to say?
Here’s a quick way to test it: pick the one sentence where you’re describing what your product or business does. Now ask yourself, “if I said this exact line to a specific person I’m trying to reach, an investor, or my first customer, would they immediately know what problem it solves for them?”
If you hesitate, that means you might have a misalignment somewhere. And the longer-term version of that same question is: where’s the misalignment, and what is that costing you?
Is This You?
Here’s your good fit checklist. We’re a good fit, if you’re…
- Unsure where to find your audience, including partners, investors, and customers, we’re a good fit.
- Not confident articulating your message, that also means we’re a good fit.
- Having trouble diagnosing things, we’re a good fit.
- Looking for someone to execute marketing for you long term, we’re not a good fit.
- But if you’re looking to get a clear-eyed view of your business and keep the control, we’re a good fit.
- If you’ve been given a strategy before but didn’t feel comfortable asking questions, so it was never implemented, we’re a good fit.
- And if you’re looking for technical illustrations, we’re also a good fit.