Are You Reaching Your Target Markets?
Reaching your target market sounds simple. As a business that is still in business, you have customers. You know who they are and how to sell to them. You know who they are and what they need. The challenge though, is in finding what they respond to online and determining if your client base is merely the tip of the iceberg for a much larger and more profitable audience.
B2B or B2C?
While business-to-business (B2B) consumers are behaving more and more like business-to-customer (B2C) consumers, there are still key differences that will affect what kind of digital marketing campaign you run. According to Forrester, B2B buyers prefer to self-educate by a ratio of 3:1. However, the platforms they utilize and the way they consume information will vary greatly.
Knowing your target
To effectively market to your target audience, you need to have fully researched them. A great start for market research is to talk to the people who service the customer, typically a person in sales or new business development. However, the research into your customer persona should not stop there.
Sometimes research into Web trends, demographics, and website or keyword analytics reveals that the target audience is not what a company initially thought. This can often lead to the discovery of new and larger target markets.
Knowing your competition
A great way to further identify your target audience is through competitor research and competitor analysis. By identifying what your competitors are doing well digitally–in terms of content marketing, design, user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and SEO/SEM keywords–you are able to replicate and exceed their results. This also is also the first step in answering the age-old question: How do I get to the first page of Google search results?
Selecting the correct platforms
Once you know who you are targeting, selecting the correct tactics and platforms becomes a lot more logical.
For instance, if you are a professional services company in a B2B space, email marketing, SEO, and LinkedIn can often show greater return on investment (ROI). However, for B2C companies like hospitality and food services, social media campaigns utilizing Facebook and Instagram will likely show greater success than they would for a B2B company.
Tailoring your content
Once you know your target audience, their motivations, and what platforms they respond to, it becomes a matter of reaching out to them. Your content, both design and text, has to establish credibility by using the right voice and tone.
Also, in order to get actual leads from the Internet rather than just website traffic, your content also has to show your benefits and have a call-to-action.
Reaching your target audience is about more than just knowing your customer. It is about using the most effective tools to discover the best ways to reach them. Studio Brand Collective is an agency that specializes in helping clients reach their target markets in the digital marketing space.
