Never fail to attract the right audience
Do you know your customer?
Have you ever read a blog or eBook that guarantees that your sales will skyrocket if you do X, Y, or Z. Or perhaps if you just buy a ‘certain product’ or download this guide - it will magically lead to increased sales… Sounds familiar?
Unfortunately, the there is no abracadabra-formula to generate more leads and sales in an instant, but by starting to understand your target market, is the first step in the right direction.
Often, business owners and marketers struggle to pinpoint their customer, and that has a ripple-effect across all marketing channels and efforts. But don’t stress, you don’t have to be an F.B.I. profiler to define and attract your ideal customer – you just have to use the information you already have.
Technology is your friend 😉.
Here are our top (not-so-secret) free methods to help you determine who your converting customer is:
Gather information about your audience
Audience Insights: understanding the who, what, how, and why of the people following your brand on social media or visiting your website.
Social media platforms offer audience insights to page owners and managers. This is data that has been collected by the specific platform that can assist to understand who the page followers and fans are, their needs, and interests, and their demographics. It usually gives information about the people that is connected to your page, as well as the people that is active on the platform. Google Analytics is the tool used to evaluate your website visitors and the behaviour of your visitors. Analytics can determine the source of traffic: direct, organic, social, referral, and how long people are spending on your website. It can also give more information about the type of device people used to view your website, the demographics, the landing pages that performs the best, and many more. There’s a saying between marketing teams that ‘marketers lie, but numbers don’t’. Digital marketing makes it possible to track everything! Every piece of information you see on Google Analytics is telling you something about your customer. For example, if the bounce rate is high, there is a reason why people come to your website but does not stay too long. It can be several factors, like bad user-experience, website loading time is slow, people can’t find what they’re looking for on your website, or the target audience used for the paid media ads are wrong. If people are spending a lot of time on your website, but doesn’t convert, it could tell you that they are price sensitive, they are not sold on the product yet and need more education, etc. A good marketing team takes the information and evaluate it in detail to ensure they accurately give feedback about the why and how of consumer behaviour. To understand your ideal target audience even better, gather information from third parties, to ensure you are up to date on industry trends, and factors that influence people’s buyers’ journey. You can use tools such as GWI., Spark Toro, and Connectio. These tools are not for free but is worth it to gather in-depth insight into your ideal target audience. Focus groups, Survey Monkey, or email questionnaires are also great ways to get to know your audience better – and it’s free.
Take Action
There is endless information available to help you know and understand your ideal target audience better. If that’s too overwhelming, start with the following information:
Demographics: Gender and Age
Majority Common Interests: Are they interested in health and wellness, traveling, beauty, or financial investing?!
Device: Do they access your social media pages and website mostly via mobile devices, or do they prefer using a desktop?
Is there a time lag in their purchase pattern? Do they visit your ecommerce store, and purchase immediately or do they wait a few days and revisit your online store?
So, after you’ve answered the above questions, and understand who your ideal target audience is, and what they prefer - use it to your advantage. Use the information available to tailor messaging and creatives to speak directly to your customer, for example the way you communicate to a female millennial audience, will be different from the messaging and creatives you use for a Baby Boomer. The more a customer can relate to your brand on social media, the more likely they are to engage with your content, click through to your website, and ultimately become a loyal customer. If you see that most of your audience visits your website on their mobile devices, it’s crucial to ensure your website is mobile responsive. Adapt the mobile site to make it more user-friendly and show people what they are most likely to be interested in first. Understanding and targeting your ideal audience can feel confusing at first, but if you use the data available to your advantage, you’ll never fail to attract the right customer again.
