“I don’t like that.”
While personal preferences are “good,” I find that we allow them to impact our decisions too much.
Let’s say you HATE podcasts. “Who has time to listen to someone ramble for 50 minutes?”
You may—most likely will–let this impact what type of content you produce. But what if your audience loves them? Then you made a mistake by letting your preferences get in the way.
A common pushback: I am my target market. So, my preferences are theirs.
This is true .05% of the time. I’ll use myself as an example.
I’m a marketer who writes to marketers. But, my preferences could be vastly different from my current marketer audience.
And by presupposing that my prejudgments and assumptions are the same as my audience, I could make erroneous mistakes by not “double-checking.”
By “double-checking,” I mean talking to my audience. And not through a survey.
I mean finding out qualitatively what they like.
That means spending unscalable time talking to one or two audience members at a time and listening to what they like most in content.
While this example could seem notional, it happens multiple times a day.
- When strategizing
- When giving feedback on content
- When deciding on branding or website design
Do you let your personal preferences get in the way of making the best decision for who you are trying to reach?
I have. But now that I’m aware, I can be cognizant of this bias and avoid it as best as possible.
How do you avoid this personal preference bias?
🧠 + ❤️ // JO