Do you know where your audience is spending their time online?
If you’re using social media as a tool to engage, you need to think about the target audiences you want to engage with. You probably think you already know who your target audience is – it’s the same people you’ve targeting for years, right? Think again.
Define Your Audience
Before you jump into social media marketing head first, start by defining your audience and your target market. The key to being able to market your products and services is to know who to market them to and what makes them tick.
Let’s start with the easy stuff, your audience’s demographics. If you don’t know your audiences demographics, you should. Make it easy for yourself, what are the obvious characteristics of your audience? For example, a domestic boiler repair business might target home-owners. Knowing that your audience are home-owners is a start, but you need to know to more about your audience so you can craft social media posts that they will appreciate.
Start by thinking about the types of customers who are driving your business forward and giving you repeat business.
Price
First of all, people’s buying habits are often defined by prices, it’s important to look at your products or services pricing band. Do your customers have to fall into a certain income bracket to afford your product or services, if so, what are they?
Gender
Who is your products or service aimed at, men or women? If both, think about your typical customers. What age bracket do they fall into? Are they single, married or have children? Think about who makes the purchasing decisions, that will help you recognise whether it’s males or females purchasing your products or services.
Location
Do you know where you customers are located, are they local or national? If you’re selling online the chances are your customers’ locations will be more widely spread, but if you’re a local village shop your customers are likely to be local.
These are only simple questions, but by the time you’ve answered these questions, aim to have the following questions answered, gender, age, location, income level, martial status. Now you’ve defined who your audience is, it’s time to start thinking about what makes them tick, particularly on social media.
Find your audience online
Once you’ve established who your customers are, then you can start finding them online. First of all if you’re not on social media, get on social media. How do you know what people are saying about your brand if you can’t see it? Listen to social media and start from here, what are people saying about your brand on Twitter and Facebook?
Monitor social media for online mentions and listen to what people are saying about your brand, product or services – customer feedback is the most useful types of feedback so take it on board. Hone in on the most vocal customers, find them and ask them questions so you can get the information you need to improve your brand and make your social media presence a positive one.
Make sure you stay up to date with the news and trends in your industry, and with your competitors. Keep your ears to ground, social media is a valuable tool for finding out everything and anything. Use it to give yourself a better understanding of what’s going on in the industry, what your customers want and what is appealing about your services and services.
Your Persona
This should all be making sense to you now, and providing you with an idea of who your target audience is. Once you know who your audience is, it’s time to target them and market yourself in the right way. Make sure every blog, social media post and all marketing messages are crafted with them in mind. Before writing a blog or social media message think to carefully about how you’re going to reach them with your message, appeal to them, and how you can work to understand them better.
When you’re armed with specific information about your audience, you can make smarter decisions about how to connect with them using language and messaging that resonates with them. Tailoring your social media marketing to engage, excite and delight your customers, is much more effective than targeting any customer.
A tailored and informed approach will make your customers love your brand, services and products.
