Success

Success for any creative business can take many forms; financial success, peer regard or acknowledged technical excellence for instance. What determines this success is usually intensely personal.

However, in order for any of those achievements to be attained within any professional creative practice, it could be argued that one factor, common to all of them must be achieved first. That common factor is that of creating, then increasing, the right audience for the work that is produced.

You could think of it in the terms of success, for any creative, in any genre, is significantly connected to the size of the audience they can create and the intensity of the relationship they are able to maintain with it.

Growing your audience
In order to grow your chosen audience, you need to be able to present the right information, in the right place, in the right way. All of this information must be an answer to the question, “Why should they buy from you”?

Right Information
The right information needs to express in very simple terms what your customers will get by buying your product, in terms of:

• Product experience – How will your product or service improve or add value their lives? How great will the experience of buying from you be and why?
• What to do next? – Simply put, how to buy from you, find your organisation or how to find out more information about products or services?
Right Place
Your audience will already look for information in certain places, by understanding their current patterns; you can ensure your message is in the right place to get noticed. You need to consider:
• Media – Is your audience most likely to find your message on line via a website, newsletter or product review or via a press or poster and leaflet campaign?
• Partnership – Who else can help me share my message with their client base?

Right Way
The way you express yourself in your publicity is all important, the things you need to consider are:

• Language – You wouldn’t speak to young people in the same language as the over 60’s so ask, what language do your clients or audience use?
• Terminology – In what terms do your audience like to be spoken to in, do they need lots of technical data or value expressed in ways that are more emotive? Expressing the benefits of your product in the right way can be critical to getting your message across.

Neil SImpson is the manager at The Storey Creative Industries Centre.