Perhaps of all things that a marketer must do, defining that the target market is among the most important tasks. Your entire strategy will be based upon identifying exactly who this target audience is. A company can’t simply just go out and randomly market to everyone—this is not going to get you very far. You have to be able to determine what group identifies with your particular niche and then strategize from there.
The better defined your audience, the more effective your ads will be, as the focus of those ads becomes far more evident. With time and with a greater understanding of this target audience, you will start to see measurable results by way of increased sales and improved ROI.
We wanted to offer here some strategies for helping you to determine who your target group is and in turn, enable you to use this knowledge to narrow your overall marketing focus so that it will have an optimal impact.
Identifying your target audience is largely going to be based upon doing the right kind of research. So how do you proceed with said research…Below are five tips to help you make the most of this process.
1. Get info on your current customers
You probably already have a fairly solid customer base—so use them. These are consumers who are interested in your products/services and are consequently buying them. The best way to grasp who your target market should be is to utilize current customers as a mold of sorts. Thus, in the interest of doing research, you are going to want to gather information from those current clients willing to participate.
Some such points you may want to try and obtain, include:
- Age: Not necessarily exact age, but ranges are helpful in determining what type of people frequently use your products.
- Location: Knowing where customers tend to live is incredibly helpful. This not only relates to defining your audience but also to the type of hours you should keep etc.
- Interests: What do they like to do? To watch? Read? A client’s interest definitely helps you better recognize the kind of people who’d be apt to engage with your firm.
2. Study the analytics
Social media analytics is a great place to start in terms of gathering data on potential customers. Even if people aren’t using your product yet, they may still be interacting with your various social media platforms—so take advantage of the info you can get from this.
Facebook, in particular, is a great channel for seeing what type of things consumers like, what they gravitate toward and what their general interests might be.
3. Check out the competition
By looking at the kinds of people buying from your competition, you can get a pretty decent handle on who might subsequently buy from you. Not to mention, researching your competitors can give you valuable insights you might not have previously considered. How are they reaching prospective customers? Are they going after the same audience as you? How might they be branding themselves? All questions that should be answered in order to get you a leg up.
Now, while the information you do gather this way is not going to be as detailed as say, studying your analytics, it will give you a broader picture of the type of people moving toward your competitors and what strategies might be at work to make this happen.
4. Highlight your productservice value
Yes, you might offer potential customers a list of what is so great about your company and the products you offer, but can you elucidate exactly how it will benefit them? Meaning, can you explain the results that a customer will get utilizing your product or service?
Having a clear and concise list that users can access in order to understand how their lives will be made better and their pain points alleviated via your product is absolutely critical. In devising this type of list, you are also doing some of the work toward better defining that target audience. You are thinking about the kinds of people that need your serviceproduct and you are in turn writing for them.
You can also do some direct research regarding potential pain points and benefits by simply asking people questions. Getting out there, interacting and asking questions can reveal quite a bit that you might not have known. For instance, people may be using a product in a way you hadn’t thought of previously. This could then give you more insight into the type of benefits your productservice actually provides. You can send out an email survey to this effect, or also use your social media pages to engage consumers.
5. Have a target market statement
Once you’ve gathered info, reviewed the data and drawn some conclusions regarding your target market, you now need to create a boiled down target market statement. In generating this type of statement, you want to focus on the most important demographic information you have, first and foremost.
So for instance: age range, where do they live, what stage of life are they in (retired, students, etc./), and what are their general interests. Of course you can always add more information and broaden the statement a bit; however, don’t get too broad with it. This is your guide for moving forward in coming up with a clearly defined target audience.
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