Every business will accurately recognize its target audience when developing an initial business plan for strategic marketing. Most commonly, this includes market segmentation to identify demographics and customer buying habits. However, simply having this information will not guarantee that your business can reach your target audience in the best way.
Most industries these days have become relatively fast-paced and ever-evolving, to which the consumer plays a significant role. General consumer behavior has changed radically in response to COVID-19. With more time spent online and improved access to a widening choice of services and products, it is more challenging for businesses to keep up. A marketing strategy that works today may not necessarily work in the next quarter. Living in such unprecedented times makes it imperative for companies to continue to find innovative ways to reach out to their target market. Keep reading to learn 3 Ways to Ensure You Are Reaching Your Audience Correctly.
- Segmentation
Customer segmentation is the first step forward. As mentioned, it is common practice for a business developing a marketing plan to have demographic, geographic, and psychographic data about their selected target market. However, an audience can be further defined into groups to understand their personality traits and behaviors better. To do this, we can ask questions such as:
- What pain points does your product or service solve?
All consumers have a reason why they have chosen your brand – to solve a problem or help them with something. If you are a B2C company, you are selling products and services to consumers for personal use. Marketing communications must therefore be in the customer’s voice to make it more relatable. Point out the benefits of your brand clearly and try to evoke emotion to create a desire for your product or service. For B2B companies, your messaging will be very different. The language used must strike a more professional, rational tone and get to the point of how your product or service will improve their business performance
- What is your target customer motivated by?
Understanding a customer’s goals and motivations alongside their interests and hobbies will allow you to execute targeted marketing. Facebook Adverts will enable you to reach customers by detailed filters based on the groups they join, the entertainment they enjoy, and the pages that they follow. On LinkedIn, businesses can leverage a selection of professional targeting parameters, enabling you to become more segmented and hyper-specific with your marketing campaigns. Even if you are not using this specific social media platform for your brand, having this information can help you create more valuable content that will better resonate with the customer.
- What are your target customer’s shared experiences?
Subcultures are groups of people who connect based on a shared experience or the type of content they enjoy. Understanding how a subculture relates to your business will enable you to channel your marketing more effectively for better reach. For example, Netflix targets subcultures based on the types of content they watch with social media accounts specific to them. Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook integrate AI algorithms that identify posts or products that interest the client to leverage marketing opportunities. Learning what subcultures your brand appeals will allow you to tailor your marketing rather than having one standardized message for a large audience.
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- Data Analytics
Data analytics is fundamentally a core resource for any business’s targeting efforts.
In recent years, data-driven marketing has become more widely adopted. By using the right tools, you can gain valuable insight into your target audience through several methods.
AI technology enables you to understand customer preferences and needs by tracking what potential customers look at on your website and how long they spend on specific pages. Analyzing this data can help you identify and improve areas to better engage with the customer and predict their future purchasing behavior. Data can also be collected from monitoring social listening to gain a real-time understanding of your brand sentiment. Any concerns or issues observed from online conversations can be leveraged to update your marketing communications or develop a strategic marketing campaign. Another significant advantage of data-driven marketing is being able to understand your engagement through social media channels. Data can help suggest how to improve your content and highlight what timeframes work best to boost activity.
- Personalize your Persona
The process of creating a buyer or customer persona to represent a target audience can be seen as an extension of segmentation. The best practice would be to develop multiple fictional characters that detail personal preferences and personality traits to map out and understand your ideal customer journey. If done correctly, personas become an effective tool that can be referenced repeatedly when developing marketing campaigns to ensure you do not miss any touchpoints as you guide the customer through the sales funnel. To learn how to make effective personas, read our blog, Customer Personas 101, for tips. Accurate personas that go beyond standard information like age, occupation, and other demographic data will align your team’s understanding of who you are targeting, support marketing strategizing, and make copywriting and ad strategy more streamlined.
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Implementing these three steps will not provide a long-term guarantee of customer engagement. As aforementioned, target marketing is a continual process as consumer trends and behaviors constantly evolve. To ensure you stay up to date, return to these steps and review your marketing strategy on a timely basis. Adhering to such practices will allow your business to stay on track, remain competitive, and continue to grow.
If you are looking for ways to grow your business, get in touch with IMS to find out how our services can help you.
