Tara Gentile is known for helping people grow terrific businesses — without sacrificing ethics or heart.
Tara works with “idea people” — people who have an idea that they want to turn into a product, program, or service, but who may not always see themselves as business owners or marketers. She helps her audience and clients find the right business models, craft marketing that resonates, and structure their business for profit.
She calls her approach the Quiet Power Strategy — and it’s a complete reversal of a lot of the “cookie cutter” advice you sometimes see around digital business.
Listen and observe
A while back, Tara spoke with Rainmaker Digital CEO Brian Clark about how to thoughtfully observe your audience in order to strengthen your business.
Listen to Win: How Actionable Observation Provides Profitable Answers
Brian and Tara share a deep focus on listening in order to uncover audience interests, fears, and desires. When you master this, everything about your business starts to work better.
It’s also the key to marketing that doesn’t feel pushy or creepy — because you’re speaking directly to the problems and concerns of your audience, using their own language. Marketing becomes a direct expression of audience empathy.
Listening is the key to building a business based on service rather than selfishness.
“I see [listening] as probably the biggest thing that’s keeping people from creating marketing that works and products that sell easily … and sales processes that don’t feel slimy.”
— Tara Gentile
What do they care deeply about?
In Tara’s world (and ours), the journey always starts with the deepest goals and concerns of the audience.
“How are you going to help them go from before to after?”
— Tara Gentile
Tara’s process unearths what she calls the Target Conversation. Who are the people having this conversation, and what are they actually talking about?
Most of the time, the road from their problem to the solution you offer isn’t a straight line; it’s a series of somewhat meandering connections. This sequence of relevant ideas will click with the person where they are right now — not where you wish they were.
Tara calls this step Connecting the Dots: starting with where they are today, then moving purposefully to the next dot .. and the next, and the next.
In this way, you create a clear path between your audience’s problems and your solutions.
Solving audience problems … even if you aren’t a renowned expert
“Don’t call yourself an expert … just be helpful. If you’re two steps ahead
of your audience on the journey, you’re still a leader.”
— Brian Clark
Tara and Brian share the conviction that business that’s built on solving specific audience problems is far more powerful than starting with a notion of some abstract “market.”
“When you look at real people with real problems — or with real desires — they’ve got
blanks. There’s something missing that isn’t allowing them to accomplish what they want
to accomplish…. There’s sort of a locked door between that before and after…. And we’ve
got insight into how to open it.”
— Tara Gentile
Once you adjust your approach to focus your business’s marketing and products on customer problems and the solutions to those problems, you’ve set yourself up for success.
How to approach writing a promotion
“My best tip for copywriting is to feed your customers’ words back to them…. They want to know that you’ve actually thought about what their problem is.”
— Tara Gentile
First, Tara listens for the themes and language that come up again and again for her audience. Her promotional copy is then crafted to provide answers and solutions that speak to those specific issues.
She builds each sales page around a single key insight that’s arisen from conversations with her audience and customers. That gives the promotion focus, connecting Tara’s expertise directly to what’s most important to her prospects right now.
Promotions crafted this way stand out from the general background of noise and clutter that we see every day on the web and in our in-boxes.
“The opposite of quiet isn’t loud, it’s noise”
— Tara Gentile
Let Tara walk you through her process: 7 Ways to Listen to Your Audience
We’re so happy that Tara will be joining us this October in Denver, Colorado at our live Digital Commerce Summit.
Here’s what Tara had to say about the presentation she’ll be teaching:
“It’s time to stop guessing about what digital product to create (whether it’s your first or your next). It’s also time to stop wasting time and money building the wrong products (i.e. the ones people don’t buy). Learn seven distinct ways to listen to your audience and build a system for turning what you hear into profitable offers. You’ll never have to guess about what people want to buy again.”
Tara’s process is applicable to any business — from selling a single ebook to running a multi-million dollar SaaS.
Join us October 13-14 for a carefully chosen curriculum that will give you the momentum you need to level up as a digital entrepreneur.
Tara is just one of 15 speakers who have walked the walk. Over two days we’ll teach you how to take your digital project to the next level — or how to get something new off the ground.
We’re looking forward to seeing you there!
