Have you ever seen an advertisement and wondered, “Why am I seeing this?” It’s because a lot of marketing campaigns are not able to reach and connect with their intended audience effectively. In the end, the experience of customers is hampered.
According to a Zendesk report, the majority of consumers are looking for experiences that are personal. How do you accomplish this if you’re not sure who you’re catering to?
If you’re having trouble connecting with customers here’s a guide on how you can build your customers and boost your digital marketing strategy.
Table of Contents
What Is a Target Audience?
In the course online Digital Marketing Strategy, target audience refers to the set of people who are most likely to be interested in your product or services. These consumers should be the primary focus of your marketing strategy.
Although you are able to identify your ideal customers in a variety of ways, identifying your target audience without the right customer information is a challenge. According to an HubSpot survey 82% of marketers believe that high-quality data on customers is crucial to be successful in their job.
Digital Marketing Strategy offers three categories of data about customers you must consider gathering: demographics, customer behavior, and motivations for consumers.
Demographic Data
The initial set of data is focused on your typical customer’s demographics. This may include:
- Age
- Gender
- Occupation
- Interests and lifestyle
This information can be particularly helpful when you are making assumptions about your clients. For instance, if your company is primarily targeting women of the millennial age and their preferences for things like business sustainability are typically in line with this segment of the population.
The personal information of your customers will provide valuable information in the development and execution of your marketing strategy. But many marketers find it difficult to gather this information. According to HubSpot that only 41 percent of all marketers are aware of the demographics of their target audience and less than half of them know their interests or hobbies.
Customer Behavior
The analysis of customer behavior is a different method to determine your target customers. In contrast to preferences and information about lifestyles the focus of this type of analysis is customer behavior that is linked to your product or services.
Some examples of the behavior that customers exhibit can include:
- Purchase information and frequency
- Email marketing open rates
- Web interaction patterns
By studying these habits and patterns, you will gain valuable insights into your intended group and discover how you can connect with them through emails, online ads and blog posts.
When patterns begin to emerge, for example frequent visits to your website without purchase It could be a sign of that there is a gap between your message and the market you want to reach. Data on behavior can help you to close the gap.
Consumer Motivations
The last method of determining your ideal audience is to focus on the main reasons that consumers use that often involves asking “What are they searching for?”
When it comes to goods consumers are looking for:
- Convenience
- Value
- Status
One of the most effective ways to understand your customers’ motives is to conduct market research by conducting focus groups and surveys. The information you collect will assist you in categorizing your customers and better understand their motivations for purchasing.
It’s also true for your personal brand. Through the course online Personal Branding, Harvard Business School Professor Jill Avery offers another practical method that is applicable to all brands types: think about the people you wish be influential, their needs and wants are looking for and how you can bring value and create a positive change to their daily lives. The shift in focus from promotion to creating resonance will help your message be more relevant to the people you want to reach.
Top Benefits of Identifying Your Target Audience
Understanding your audience’s needs is crucial to a success in digital marketing. Here are the advantages of identifying your customer and their needs.
Target Market Segmentation
Segmentation is essential to your digital marketing strategy. It is the process of separating customers who have similar preferences and needs into groups known as “segments,” enabling you to offer them personalized experiences.
This method closely resembles the structure that is taught by the course Personal Branding, which asks you to think about whom you would like to interact with and the reasons for it.
- Who is important to you as you strive to achieve your goals?
- What do they require from you?
- What are the pain points they’re suffering from that you are able to relieve?
- What kind of desires do they express which you could meet?
- What do you think you can do to be able to make a difference in people’s lives?
These questions will help you consider a wider range of demographics in order to pinpoint the emotional and motivational factors that determine a market.
Take a look at Nike’s division of customer base 40% of the audience is female. To target this segment, Nike incorporates messaging about endorsements of female athletes inclusive models, as well as overall health in its advertisements. However Nike connects with its other targeted audiences, which include male sports enthusiasts and young athletes (pdf).
Apart from providing a personalized experience for customers Segmentation also has advantages in terms of financial gain and could increase revenues by as much as 780 percent.
Adaptability
The identification of your audience’s needs is not just a way to inform the current marketing strategies, but also allows you to adapt to any the changes your customers could encounter.
If, for instance, the majority of your customers aren’t price sensitive, your marketing messages shouldn’t be focused on the value.
Think about fast-food chain McDonald’s flexibility in the face of increasing price sensitivity in recession in 2008. While a lot of businesses struggled, as the consumer tightened belts McDonald’s altered its marketing strategies to emphasize its product’s quality and value. The company increased the number of Dollar Menu ads and introduced special deals and meals that are worth the price via online platforms that are commonly utilized by its targeted customers.
McDonald’s illustrates how brands can manage the appeal of mass media with a specific marketing strategy.
“McDonald’s is unique because we truly are for everyone,” says Amy Murray, a global marketing executive and McDonald’s former vice president of global marketing capability and family during the on-line course on Creating Brand Value. “We would like to say McDonald’s is a democratic brand. Everyone is accepted. However, when we’re doing advertising, it’s focused upon Gen Z. We usually focus on the younger customer since we’ve found that kids in the early years want to become older. When you’re older, it’s aspire towards being younger.”
Focusing on the “sweet spot,” McDonald’s succeeds in attracting a specific customer base while also embracing customers from all walks of life.
If you know your customers, you can alter your marketing strategies to meet the ever-changing needs of customers.
Return on Investment
It is essential to spend your money effectively to ensure that your marketing strategy remains on track and provides an ROI. Your marketing strategies must be geared and specific.
Find out more about the return on investment by watching the following video. Join our YouTube channel to receive additional explanations!
Think about the marketing strategies of HelloFresh. While some food companies boast on their high-quality ingredient, HelloFresh customers primarily want the convenience of a nutritious packaged delivery service.
This is why the company has been investing in ads that target young consumers looking for low-cost food choices, such as streaming ads designed to be seen by gamers and YouTube videos that attract young home cooks.
HelloFresh provides a reason to take advantage of your readers’ preferred platforms and publications to ensure that the money you invest in advertising is reaching the right people.
Budweiser provides a distinct yet equally important point of view regarding ROI. It’s the importance of perception.
“Even if the brand absolutely outperforms everybody else in a blind taste test today, perception can become more important than reality,” says Brian Perkins, Budweiser’s vice head of global marketing in creating brand value. “Because when people think that Budweiser’s brand is cheap and accessible this can cause them to believe that it may not be the most popular beer available.
Perkins’s insights highlight a vital idea: Even when your product performs an outcome, your brand’s perception to your market will determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaign and ROI.
Consumer Relationships
The relationships with customers are essential to the success of your business. According to an McKinsey report the power of word-of-mouth is the main reason behind 20 to 50% of the buying decisions.
Fitness apparel manufacturer GymShark is a prime illustration of how having strong relationships with your audience could result in long-term growth. In spite of the fierce competition in fitness marketplace, GymShark has achieved record-breaking sales.
What’s the secret? The strong relationships with athletes who endorse, wear and even create clothes that are branded with the brand. Through partnership agreements, GymShark gets cost-effective advertising from the influencers its targeted customers trust.
“In general, influencers have a significant following on social media and have the power to influence purchase decisions of their followers,” Gupta writes in Digital Marketing Strategy. “Some research studies show that 82 percent of people are highly likely to act upon the recommendation of an influencer, and 92 percent of consumers trust the recommendations of people they follow on social media more than they trust commercial messages from companies.”
While engaging with influencers may not be the best option for your company, GymShark exemplifies how engaging with your audience’s needs will benefit your marketing plan.
Find Your Target Audience
Selecting the ideal target market will yield benefits in your digital marketing strategy. When you’re writing an advertising plan for your current business or a brand new venture or for your personal brand, conducting a thorough research to pinpoint the ideal audience and then adjusting your message, and maintaining these relationships is essential to marketing your brand.
One of the most efficient methods to achieve this is by registering for an online course in marketing. Through case studies that are real-world you will learn to make your target audience a part of the process within your marketing strategy.
