Have you experienced a sales slump or no sales growth for your business? Have you tried many marketing campaigns and only to see them fail miserably? Are you tired of spending your hard-earned dollars to so-called advertisers who make promises and don’t produce any satisfactory results? If this is you, then read on because a solution will be coming your way!
Let’s discover why you cannot connect with the customers you’ve been trying to reach!
The process of reaching your target audience doesn’t need to be difficult! Use this roadmap to get customers and dominate your online marketspace while also saving money and time on your marketing efforts.
- Define your target market
- Use targeted ads
- Create useful and relevant content
Step 1: Define your target audience
A target audience is a group of people you’ve decided sell your products or services to. This could be a large segment of the population or a niche group.
Reaching your target audience will require detailed research.
Market research will help you better understand your target customers. You will want to get demographic information on your customers to understand your opportunities and limitations.
Some common demographic information you can use to better target your customers include:
- Demand: Is there a demand for your product or service?
- Size: How big is the market for your product or service?
- Economic factors: What’s the income, types of occupations, and employment for your customer?
- Location: Where does my customer live?
- Saturation: How many other products or services like yours that are available to your customer?
- Price: What type of price your customer is willing to pay?
To find the answers to these questions, start by researching your customers. You can find this information using an existing source which could save you time, however, this method may not produce in-depth information about your target customer group. For example, you may be able to obtain basic information such as demographics and income, but you may not be able to understand their buying habits.
Asking the customers directly is more likely to yield more detailed information. You can obtain specific details, such as which competitors the customers rely on to get similar products, reactions to your brand/logo/product, or how you can improve their buying experience.
Researching your own customers can uncover behavioral traits that existing sources could not provide.
There are many sources you can utilize to obtain information from your customers, such as:
- Surveys
- Focus Groups
- Questionnaires
- In-depth interviews
Keep in mind that this type of research is time-consuming and could be expensive, so be sure to review your needs carefully before choosing any of these methods, so you can ensure it would make sense for your company’s needs.
Although appealing to, or even creating, a niche market and building up a strong brand is a dream for most entrepreneurs, it is exceedingly difficult to consistently reach target customers. Sadly, most businesses fail to reach their target audience.
What should you do to ensure that you do not become the next failed business statistic?
Step 2: Use Targeted Social Media Ads
Now that you have identified your target market and you have figured out the demographics of your customers it is time to put the concept into action.
Social media sites are some of the best places to advertise to your target audience.
The biggest social media platforms today are YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. YouTube has over 2 billion users per month, Facebook has 2.74 billion active users, and Instagram has over 1 billion active users. Pinterest has 335 million active users and grew 26% in the last year, making it the third largest social media platform in the US.
With that many eyeballs exploring these sites each day, it’s common sense that you would want to use social media to reach your target audience and connect with potential new customers. Bringing your brand online is the best thing you can do for your business, thanks to the evolution of social media.
Social media also brings another unique advantage: besides giving you access to millions of new people; it can also help you understand your existing customers and what they want!
Most social media sites already use ads that will capture the same data points used in your initial target audience research. Social media platforms will send personalized advertisements to your customers based on their demographic information and search history.
You should take full advantage of these targeted ads and site generated information by using known demographics and your own surveys to further get to know who your customers are and what they want.
Using social media ads will also help narrow down and find your audience niche so you can locate your dream customers. Buy the ads that specifically target the customer you had in mind.
Using surveys to learn more about your existing customers is a fantastic way to gain more insight. They are a reliable, primary source of very valuable information. You can find very specific information about their preferences if you look into which social media sites, blogs, and YouTube videos, etc, are their favorites.
Many social media platforms will work with your current customer relationship management software that allows you to use your customer emails to send out surveys. You can ask them specific questions about their behaviors and traits. This method is designed to discover their needs and possibly acquire new customers.
Step 3: Create Effective and Relevant Social Media Marketing Content
The best way to get your target audience’s attention is to create helpful and outstanding content. Your target audience will be more engaged with your brand if you supply content that interests them. The more targeted this content becomes, the more it will grab your customers attention and engage them. Done well it could ultimately end in an increased interest towards your product or service.
The next question in your mind may be, “Well how do I do that?”
You can create effective and relevant content using the 3 following ways:
- Video marketing online
- Blog Posts
- Social media marketing content
Video Marketing Online
Video marketing, although not a new concept, is a way to get your target audience engaged with your brand in the simplest way. Over the years, social media platforms have increased the usage of video content.
Some of the most popular social media platforms you can use for videos are:
- YouTube
- Tik Tok
- Snapchat
A majority of people who use these channels use their accounts weekly, if not daily. There are many companies have achieved enormous success through these channels. There is a reason marketer have increased creating content on these platforms.
Don’t just go out and wing it when it comes to creating videos for your social media campaigns, you will need a strategy aligned with your overall marketing strategy.
You will want to take these steps when creating videos for your social media campaign:
- Define your goals
- Define your audience
- Define what type of videos you will make
- Create your videos
- Share them across your target platforms
- Monitor your results
Again, social media sites are the most popular platforms for viewing videos, so it makes sense to create video content to post on these sites. Social media platforms have up to billions of users logging daily, so you should not allow yourself to miss out on the potential sales that are out there, your target audience can be found on any of these sites!
Blog Posts
A blog post is a website that’s updated regularly in an informal style. Blog posts dive into a particular subject or a subtopic on your webpage. Look at blog posts as practical, supplemental information used to attract more traffic to your website and increase customer awareness about topics relating to your brand. Blog posts are going to be a core part of your content creating strategy.
In fact, customers love blogs! Blogs have been rated as the 5th most trusted source of information online recently. In addition, businesses who use blogs obtain 67% more leads that those who don’t. A well-curated blog can attract more customers to your site and will help you develop a strong, reputable online presence, particularly with your target audience.
Here are some of the many other benefits a blog can bring:
- High ranking in Google searches
- Gain brand loyalty and trust by showing industry knowledge
- Helps customers find answers to their questions before they need to ask you for it
- Allows your customers to share your brand on social media
- Supply useful and helpful information instead of relying on hard sales pitches
- In other words, who would you rather give your money to? A person who listens to you and provides advice or someone who just tells you about how great their product or services are?…You’re welcome.
You may also want to consider using an email newsletter for your blog posts. Email lists may actually be more effective than targeted ads.
For example, the average click through rate for an advertisement on Facebook is .09% with an average cost per click of $1.72. An email list through blogging, on the other hand, generates an estimated $38 in revenue for every dollar spent, on average. It’s a no-brainer to incorporate emails with your blogging strategy!
Writing a blog is one of the most effective methods of reaching your target audience. It creates brand loyalty and trust by providing helpful information and industry knowledge. Blogs increase your online presence by simply ranking high in Google searches by key words being used. And blogs can help you earn more revenue over time! Blogs are a must-have when creating your content strategy!
Social Media Marketing Content
Social media marketing content is used to inform, educate, and/or entertain customers by getting a reaction that would result in sales and/or advocacy. Communication through social media is less structured and less formal; it could even be classified simply as a conversation.
While creating content, you will want to keep the following benefits of effective social media marketing in mind:
- Create excellent content
- Start having great conversations
- Create brand awareness and recognition
- Increasing website traffic
Create content for your social media marketing efforts, as well as your blog posts. Posting your content (images, videos, polls etc.) on a regular basis can ensure success for brand awareness and recognition on social media. You’ll also want to make sure you post based on what you know about your audience and what content you know they’d like to see and will typically respond to.
Without creating quality content and regular posts you may not achieve the results that you are trying to achieve.
Social media marketing content also reinforces brand awareness and recognition. You can cross reference your blog posts and advertisements to build up a following. Social media marketing allows your content to be shared outside the original platform thus creating more opportunities for leads.
Combining strategies for social media marketing content can also start conversations about your brand. It builds trust and recognition and can ultimately increase web traffic.
Sources: Business News Daily US Small Business Administration, Influencer Marketing Hub