Finding Your Target Audience - Surprise! It May Not Be Who You Think It Is.

When you invest in digital marketing, it can be hard to trust the investment. As a business owner, it is easy to see your customers in person. When you have a website or social media page(s), your digital customers are more challenging to see. In order to make the most of your digital marketing budget, it’s important to be laser-focused on your audience so your dollars are spent wisely at critical points throughout the buying journey. How do you know where to find your audience? And once you do find your audience, what do you do with that information?

Google Analytics

The internet doesn’t lie. You may find that even though you sell a product that is typically purchased by men – it could turn out to be the women in the household are the ones using the internet to search for your product in order to make the final buying decision. You can learn what those demographics look like if you spend some time deep diving into your Google Analytics. Once you make the purchasing connection, your content and graphics could change from being heavily focused on “fun” and “exciting” to “budget-friendly” and “long-term investment”.

Another example is that you may initially think that your product is geared toward an older demographic, but through Google Analytics, you may find that it is children and grandchildren that are actually doing the research in order to make decisions for their aging family members. You would then shift your marketing efforts accordingly.

Data is powerful and with a tool as robust as Google Analytics, you can get a bird’s eye view of your target audience's who, what, when, where, and why.

Social Media Analytics

Just like your website analytics, social media analytics can tell you a lot about who your customers really are. Especially your loyal customers. Social media analytics are robust with information - when your followers are online, what kind of content they prefer, what drives them to your website and what doesn’t. Every social media platform has analytics to help you narrow down your target audience and narrow down your content.

Customer Personas

Customer Personas help you put yourself in the shoes of your customer. What are they looking for? What questions are they asking? What other competitors are they looking at?

Creating these personas/avatars is one of our all-time favorite target audience exercises. You get to name them, give them a family, set their education level, their interests, their personalities – however deep you want to take it (sometimes we get a little carried away with ours). We like to think of them as our own marketing Sims. These personas allows you to speak directly to your ideal customer(s). Does 35-year-old Kevin spend his Sundays watching football and eating brats at his brother-in-laws? Does he scroll on Facebook during the commercials? He's the perfect customer for our recently launched Facebook ad campaign promoting our Football Sunday Brat Kit!

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When you become a trusted resource for customers all across the buying journey, you become a service or product they are more likely to purchase.

Using the personalized data that you get directly from your customers via analytics, you can cater to each type of customer you have across their buying journey. You have the ability to speak to your customers based on their age, gender, location, likes and dislikes, profession, income, education level and values. Find out who your customers really are, and then speak directly to them long before they ever decide to make a purchase.

Using analytics and catering them to your newly defined customer personas, you can find out who your target audience really is, what works for them, what doesn’t and how to become a trusted resource for your audience before they ever make a purchase. There is value in digital marketing when used to its fullest extent. Start off with target audiences, analyze the data and the results will speak for themselves.