Nowadays, audience targeting is essential, especially when it comes to marketing your brand. You can utilize data to make sure you target the right audience.
Starting a business and making your idea a reality is no easy thing; there is a lot that goes into it. But after opening day, there is still plenty of work to be done.
Perhaps some of the most critical work at this point has to do with marketing your brand and building a lasting, positive name for your company that keeps people coming back for more.
Today, taking advantage of data for marketing is one of the most highly valued tools for doing just that. Nearly every business is collecting and using data to refine marketing strategies, improve upon products, get more customers through the door, and ultimately, earn their undying loyalty.
Data is extremely powerful. When just getting going though, it can feel overwhelming to even think about incorporating data collection and turning it into something that drives your blossoming business forward.
Finding a target audience, capturing their attention, and making them want to stay are all really broad steps. Where does one even start?
Finding Your Target Audience
The starting block for nearly all targeted marketing strategies is identifying exactly who your target audience is. Who are you trying to reach with your products, and who is most likely to be interested in purchasing what you have to offer?
This step is called segmentation — essentially breaking the entire consumer base into groups of prospective buyers with common needs. These are the people that will respond similarly to certain marketing strategies.
The factors that define these groups can vary significantly. Does your target audience fall into a certain age or wealth demographic? Do they tend to have a similar set of broad hobbies?
Do these categories change geographically? For instance, if you’re selling high-end watches, maybe your target audience on the East Coast is middle-aged executive types while on the West Coast you’re targeting young up-and-coming techies in Silicon Valley.
Once you know your target audience you can really dive into the best way to reach them with your marketing. Understanding what makes your potential customers tick can significantly help narrow down your top marketing strategies.
Some strategies will work great for one group, but not another — targeted marketing will give you the biggest bang for your buck.
Effectively Reaching Them
There are many ways to catch the attention of your target audience, but which ways are going to matter? Market research will, of course, help with this, but there are some essential tips and tricks that every serious business owner should adopt to succeed at.
These essentials are the types of things that people will come to associate with your brand automatically, such as your logo. Your logo, for instance, is one of the most important marketing tools you have.
Think of the Nike swoosh or the McDonald’s golden arches — these are logos that are understood and associated with the products they represent by nearly all cultures globally.
The goal in designing your logo is to make it appealing to your target audience. Put yourself in their shoes and think about what would attract you to or turn you off from a certain business if all you had to go on was the logo alone.
Another valuable means of reaching your target audience is through content. Content may not be the first or even the second thing you think about when you think about marketing to a target audience, but the strategy is continuing to play an outsized role in capturing potential customers.
Branded content is a great way to tell your business’s story, values, and goals which is a powerful means of converting like-minded customers.
Building Brand Loyalty
In fact, content may be one of the most significant means of building brand loyalty. This is the goal. Loyal customers are the ones that will continue to come back over and over.
Research suggests that loyal customers are likely to spend 67% more than new customers on a given purchase. Likewise, they are the ones that are going to rave about your brand to others. Word of mouth recommendations is the best form of free marketing you can ever hope to ask for.
There are a variety of ways to build brand loyalty with your target audience. Some of the best ways to ensure continued loyalty include:
- Focusing on improving customer experience and maintaining great customer service
- Communicating with customers through your marketing channels regularly
- Thinking about implementing a rewards program for loyal customers
- Taking feedback seriously and working towards building in the tools and flexibilities your customers ask for
Remember, customer preferences are constantly changing. This means your target audience preferences are too. It is important to make sure your business is keeping up with these changes.
Revisit your models of data collection regularly and tweak them as necessary to continue to remain high in sync with who your target audience is and what their preferences are.
***
Using data to enhance your marketing strategy is an important component of running a highly successful business. Targeted marketing is a staple in this process.
Getting started can be tricky, but defining your target audience, determining the best way to reach them, and building their loyalty is the formula for success.
PLEASE SHARE ON PINTEREST
