Lessons Learned #4: Putting Yourself in Your Customer’s Shoes

This morning I was chatting online with my pal and colleague Kate Haigh about marketing issues (she's a fellow freelancer who puts a lot of value on the time she invests in both the "thinking" and "doing" elements of promoting her editorial business, Kateproof). Our conversation reminded me, once more, of another lesson I learned during my days as a marketing manager in the publishing industry: putting yourself in your customer's shoes.

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Whether you’re creating your CV, designing your website, tackling that directory listing, cold calling a client, or sending a response to an email offer to quote, put yourself in the shoes of your customer before you do anything else. Just two minutes spent in that head-space could make the difference between getting your pitch right or wrong, and between winning the job or losing it to a competitor.

For the proofreader or editor this means asking yourself:

• What kind of customer are you targeting or responding to (publisher, self-publisher, independent academic, student, large corporation, small business owner, etc.)?
• Do they know exactly what you do (e.g. editing, proofreading, copywriting, substantive editing)?
• What do they want/need to know?
• Are the terms that you use to articulate what you do the same as the terms your customer uses?
• Are their expectations and your expectations, based on that terminology, a good match?
• Are you including information that is broadly relevant to that client type? 
• And if you’re responding to an offer to quote, have you tailored that information so it’s especially relevant to that particular client?
• If you're cold-contacting a specific client or business type, have you highlighted any relevant USPs (unique selling points) that match your prior work experience to their field of business?

You might use different marketing activities to target different client types, and different hooks and pitches to make yourself interesting to those client types. It’s worth checking that the message matches the customer's expectations at each opportunity.

Tweaking and targeting each and every time the opportunity arises
Kate talked specifically about how we do this customer-shoe wearing when we're creating CVs, though the concept is applicable to any marketing activity.

I’ve lost count of the CVs/résumés I’ve generated over the years, because each time I’m asked by a client to send one as part of my quotation, I like to tailor it specifically to that invitation to quote. My website currently includes a couple of slightly different options – one focuses on the work I’ve done for academic publishers, the other for trade publishers. The former includes a truncated portfolio of social science projects that I’ve proofread, whereas the latter includes a list of fiction and commercial non-fiction projects. Both of them emphasize the information that I believe publishers want to know.

However, I don’t use either of those when a non-publisher client contacts me directly and asks me to send them a CV. Instead, I create a new one. Here are just a few examples of things I might tweak for my newly created CV, in this case for an independent writer:

• If an independent author contacts me and wants to know that I’ve proofread best-sellers, I’ll select some of the commercial published pieces of fiction that I’ve worked on (perhaps A Visit from the Goon Squad) or the Joan Collins biography I recently completed, but if they want to know that I’m experienced in working with independent authors like them I’ll add in a list of self-published projects I’ve completed, particularly those in the same genre as the author is working.
• I’ll also remove the information about my ability to use the UK publishing industry’s standard mark-up symbols and, instead, insert something about working in Word with Tracked Changes.
• My publisher-based CVs don’t include an explanation of what proofreading is – publishers already understand this. My indie author, however, might benefit from a few lines that explain exactly what my proofreading service includes.
  
• I like to include a couple of lines that reassure the indie writer of my commitment to do no harm and that I won't interfere with their authorial voice. A publisher-focused CV wouldn't explain this because it is taken as given for the level of intervention my service includes.

From the tone you use to the USPs (unique selling points) you highlight, the terminology you employ, the genres/subjects/experience you list, the kinds of testimonial you include, and the promises you make – ensuring they match what the customer needs and understands is the key to good communication and successful marketing. And if that means having multiple CVs, business cards, and promo brochures, so be it. If it means different pitches for different directory listings, so be it. If it means additional work to ensure you're using the right message to the right person at the right time, so be it.

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On the subject of CVs, if you're a new entrant to the field and are worried about how you might create an attractive editorial résumé even though you're relatively inexperienced, I'll be addressing this on the Parlour in the next few weeks.

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