Digital marketing, part 2: Target audience and tailoring your approach

(digital marketing part 2)

Welcome to the second article in our series offering a simple introduction to digital marketing. This article will focus on target audiences and advise on how you should tailor your approach according to them.  You have probably gathered as much from the title but nevertheless …

Target Audience building and tailoring your approach is a vital element in digital marketing. It can be really beneficial to find out as much information as possible about your target market. Then of course understanding how to respond to the information you gather is incredibly valuable. For those of you who have yet to read our first article in the series Part one Digital Marketing – A SMART Introduction. We are writing the series to briefly cover digital marketing for individuals who are attempting to manage this themselves. Or for anyone who would just like an insight into the subject.

WHAT IS MY TARGET AUDIENCE? 

Your target audience is basically a specific profile of people. Basically it’s a profile of people most likely to have the desired reaction to your products or services. Some of you may already have an idea of who your target audience is. Whilst that’s great a lot of people don’t. It is surprising how many businesses (successful businesses too) still think that their target market is anyone, everyone. We touched upon this fleetingly in part one Digital Marketing – A SMART Introduction. In this article we are going to be looking at who your target audience is. We will be considering How to start figuring that out who are your potential customers? How do we differentiate between someone who will benefit from your product and service someone who you are less relevant to.

how do i find out about my target audience?

There are a lot of ways to find out about your target audience. Google analytics, for example, is a great resource which can show us useful insights about the customers already visiting your website. However, before we get into marketing tools such as google analytics, it is worth considering information we can ascertain even without looking at data. Don’t get me wrong data is fantastic and you should absolutely make use of it. But that doesn’t mean that you have to put things on hold and rely on it completely. We have come up with some questions and examples as a starting point. This may be particularly relevant for those of you who have yet to establish who their target audience is.

Know Thyself: Define Your Brand and Offering

Before you can find your target audience, you need to have a clear understanding of your brand and what you’re offering. Start by asking yourself these fundamental questions:

• What products or services do you provide?
• What are the key features and benefits?
• What sets your brand apart from the competition?
• What values and beliefs does your brand embody?

By defining your brand identity and value proposition, you’ll gain insights into the type of audience that is most likely to resonate with your offerings.

Research, Research, Research

Once you have a solid grasp of your brand, it’s time to dive into research. Here are some avenues to explore:

• Demographic Analysis: Start with basic demographic information such as age, gender, location, income level, and occupation. This will give you a general overview of who your potential audience might be.
• Psychographic Profiling: Dig deeper into the psychographics of your audience. What are their interests, hobbies, values, attitudes, and lifestyles? Understanding these nuances will help you create more targeted and relevant messaging.
• Competitor Analysis: Study your competitors to see who they’re targeting and how they’re engaging with their audience. Analyse their social media presence, website content, and marketing campaigns to glean insights that can inform your own strategies.
• Customer Feedback: Don’t forget to tap into the feedback from your existing customers. Conduct surveys, read reviews, and engage in one-on-one conversations to understand their needs, pain points, and preferences.

Utilize Data and Analytics Tools to find out more about your target audience

In the digital age, we’re fortunate to have access to a wealth of data and analytics tools that can provide valuable insights into audience behaviour. There are a huge variety of excellent tools available. Here are some tools you can leverage:

• Google Analytics: Track website traffic, user demographics, and behaviour to understand who is visiting your site and how they’re interacting with it.
• Social Media Insights: Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter offer built-in analytics tools that provide valuable data on your audience demographics, engagement metrics, and content performance.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: If you have a database of existing customers, a CRM system can help you organize and analyse customer data to identify trends and patterns.

Create Buyer Personas of your target audience

Armed with your research findings, you can create detailed buyer personas that represent your target audience segments. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer, based on real data and insights. As a starting point each persona should include information such as; demographics, psychographics, pain points, goals, and preferred communication channels.

Start by thinking about:

• What sort of budget should your target audience have?
• Is your product high end or an accessible value offering compared with competitors in your industry?
• Business to business or business to customer?
• Who has the authority to make decisions regarding your product/service?
• Is location a factor?
• Are there criteria your clients must meet?

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Test and Iterate

Finding your target audience is an ongoing process that requires continuous testing and iteration. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different messaging, channels, and tactics to see what resonates best with your audience. Monitor your performance metrics closely and be willing to adapt your strategies based on the results.

Tailoring your approach

There are different platforms and digital marketing strategies which are known to be more successful for certain products, services and audiences. For example Linkedin is a great platform for business to business selling. Where as facebook/instagram have effective reseller ad options for business to customer shoppers. Although finding what works for you can take a minute but it’s well worth using the data and info that already exists. At the present time so much data, monitoring and reporting is constantly being generated. All things considered it has never been easier to access what is relevant to you.

Target audeince and tailoring your approach

In today’s crowded marketplace, finding your target audience can be incredibly helpful for marketing success. By understanding your brand, conducting thorough research, leveraging data and analytics tools, creating buyer personas, and iterating on your strategies, you can effectively connect with the right audience and drive meaningful engagement. Remember, the key is to stay flexible and responsive to the ever-evolving needs and preferences of your audience.

This concludes part two of our Digital Marketing – A SMART Introduction. In case you missed it you can go back and read part one here. We at Pickle Ipsum wish you every success in achieving those SMART goals. Thank you very much for taking the time to read our blog. We sincerely hope that this has been useful or perhaps even enjoyable. We welcome all feedback, and would love to hear if you have any useful tips or advice to share yourself, comment below. If you are interested in content relating to digital marketing or if you would like to know when we have published part two which will be discussing target audiences and how to choose your approach subscribe to our newsletter. Alternatively, stay up to date with us and our articles by following us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.