My goal with marketing and curation is to have people say “Fuck yeah! This is made for me!” So I don’t play the numbers game. I play the quality and value game. I try to find the ideal customers that have a huge lifetime value so that when I get them, they show up, they love the experience, they evangelize it, and they give me lots of money. It’s way more fun for me to hang out with fun people on my mission than people who bought a Groupon.
It works
We had great success with Scot Nery’s Boobietrap when we started focusing our marketing and curation on one actual person. Our sentinel guards our treasure for us. They are our high value customer. I would write an email to my sentinel very specifically, then remove his name from the top of the email and send it out to 4000 people.
I’ve shared this technique with lots of creatives and it has saved them a lot of time and made their work more enjoyable.
“Scot flipped a switch for me, and I immediately enjoyed doing the work that I used to hate!” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Brad Barton
Specific is universal
That’s why I invented this Sentinel technique. Marketers often use demographics / psychographics which are very general. To get more specific, they’ll use avatars (which are fictional characters). I find getting a real person is really instructive because I know exactly how to talk to them, I can empathize with them, and they have quirks that are important that I might otherwise overlook.
Take Action : Start understanding
here’s a google sheet it has examples. Fill it out now with your favorite customer
Sentinel Technique video
Find the sentinel
I have this sentinel technique.
- Pick a past customer that’s high value (beloved)
- Serve them
People think i mean make marketing for similar people. I think it’s easier to just make stuff for them. Sometimes it takes a little imagination and a ton of empathy. I really mean serve that real person. Make social media posts that help them. Make newsletters that help them. Make a website that helps them.
It attracts the same kind of people and rejects the people that are not in line with our mission.
So, when creative freelancers ask me how are they supposed to find their sentinel, my answer is you already found them.