If you are investing, as you should, in marketing, how can you ensure that you are reaching out to your intended target audience?
Know who your audience is
Sounds fundamental, right? However, in reality, a lot of businesses misjudge who their audience actually is, or don’t stay in regular enough contact or keep their finger on the pulse enough to see how that audience evolves over time. It may be that you are targeting an audience that was relevant a year ago, but today situations evolve faster than ever before. Can you still put your hand on heart and swear who your demographic is? Make sure the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.
Choose your platforms carefully
We are talking about social media, aren’t we? Yes, but never neglect the more old-fashioned platforms too, such as billboards, TV and radio. The radio, for example. is effective at delivering sounds, of course, so this may supplement your product greatly.
Social media is of course the most powerful tool available to you, with an estimated 3 billion people active on these channels, but they don’t all use the same platforms. Conduct deep research to discover demographic trends – for example, in the US, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular among teens, Facebook is used most regularly by the 25-34 age group, while only 8% of over 65s use Twitter.
Remember, choosing your platform is not just about your users, it’s also about your product. Facebook may be the most popular social media platform for your demographic, for example, but would they use it to buy a product such as yours?
LinkedIn / Facebook Ads
Ads on these incredibly popular platforms are targeted to your specific criteria, so as long as you know exactly what to include, this is really effective way of reaching your intended audience. For example, LinkedIn Ads can target your audience by such means as geography, demography, industry, job title, level of role or even groups those people are members of.
The only catch is that these strategies can be expensive so make sure your use analytics to measure the ROI of marketing by these means. Often they are great way to get your message out there, but are not sustainable in the long term.
Use a content-marketing approach
A content-marketing approach in collaboration with a well-thought-out SEO strategy will see your business move up those all-important search engine rankings. Improved visibility on places such as Google should see a dramatic impact upon sales. The trick here is to understand what your audience are looking for, and ensure your content utilizes key words that your target are likely to use (do you understand your audience’s language?) Your content must then also include links and be of a good, informative quality to boot. Content is great, but without SEO it will not drive the kind of traffic you are hoping for.
Pair up
You know your audience, and you should also know which business already market effectively to that same audience. Forming a joint venture with the right company can be hugely lucrative: you are piggy-backing onto an already successful marketing campaign through your relationship with an already established brand.
A joint venture does not have to be with another business brand either. Using a social media influencer to promote your business, for an affiliate fee, is an incredibly successful means to reach your target audience – just make sure you pick the right one!
Reach out to other sites/blogs
Keep a keen eye on blogs and websites which actively discuss your niche. This is a place where your audience gathers, so start to build a reputation there by commenting on posts. This has multiple benefits:
- It gets you noticed among those who frequent this space
- You can build relationships with those who write the articles/influencers in your niche
- If you add a link from your site, this can actually influence your search engine ranking as the likes of Google can index your content
- It increases the likelihood of a future joint venture with a brand of a similar niche or demographic, the benefits of which we have previously mentioned
Contribute posts to other sites as a guest
The benefits of this approach are very similar in nature to those when reaching out to other sites and blogs. It has mostly indirect results through the increase in page rankings, but also exposes you to more of the audience you are seeking.
Steven Novak is a regular contributor to GumEssays and LuckyAssignments as well as a marketing strategist. Follow his insightful contributions on the niche of digital marketing as well as a host of other marketing-related topics. Also, he writes for Research Papers UK academic service.
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