Know Your Audience
November 03, 2011
One of the first rules of public speaking is to know your audience. The theory is that by determining more about the people you are speaking to, you will be able to better craft a speech that keeps the attention of the audience. The same is true of an online marketing campaign. You are more likely to engage with your customers, and keep their interest in your efforts, if you tailor your campaign to them.
When you are thinking of your target demographic, you should consider who uses your services and why. Often business owners will want to use keywords they would use to search for a business of their type. They use industry lingo to explain the keywords they think their potential customers are using to find them. While we understand how the words you use to describe your business everyday come to mind naturally to you, it is not always how potential customers would search for you. Think of your customers and why they use your business. It’s likely they use your services to solve a problem, and they will search for keywords based on that problem as opposed to an industry description of the solution.
Knowing your audience is not only limited to keywords; it also applies to social media interactions. In email marketing campaigns, it is better to know if your audience is persuaded to buy with discounts or by new products. Perhaps your customers are a combination of the two. If this is the case, you should include both types of promotions in each newsletter so you can target all of your audience. Using links within your email marketing newsletters will help you to determine which items get the most clicks. This will allow you to duplicate successful efforts in the future. Email marketing isn’t the only form of social media that analytics can help you understand your audience. Facebook can tell you the demographics of your fan base. This information will help you to create more relevant posts to engage your audience. For instance, if you are a lover of Mixed Martial Arts competitions, you may be tempted to post about upcoming events and recent results at every opportunity. If, in this scenario, your Facebook fans are mostly women in their 30’s and 40’s, you are unlikely to garner a lot of interaction with those MMA posts. However, if your target demographic is women in their 30’s and 40’s with children, and you post things relevant to family activities, you’re far more likely to get responses. The same holds true for contests and raffles on Facebook and Twitter; use contests and prizes that engage your audience and you’ll have greater success.
Once you have a firm grasp of the audience that currently uses your products and services, you can use that information to market to others you wish to entice to give your company a try. By using demographic information, you can tailor your Pay-per-click advertising to be shown to only your target audience. Facebook ads can be set to show to only men in their 20’s within 25 miles of a given location, if that is your target demographic. Knowing your audience can also help you to decide which platform you should use to advertise. If your audience does not typically use Facebook, then that’s not the best platform for your advertising money. Once you know your audience, you can see if there are niche sites used by that audience. At present, there are a number of social media sites aimed at specific interest groups. Sites like Ravelry.com, which is for those who knit and crochet, and Flixster, aimed at movie lovers, are just two of the niche sites that allow advertising. Once you know your audience, you can tailor your advertising efforts to include such sites and maximize the money you spend.
The best way to gain new clients is to find out more about your existing clients. Once you know more about them, you can engage them by tailoring your marketing to their interests. Knowing your audience will help you to keep your existing customers and to attract new ones.
