One of the most important pieces of a company’s digital marketing strategy is their audience. Without understanding your core demographic of customers, it’s nearly impossible to properly identify the direction of your marketing strategy. This can apply to any facet of marketing — from social media to print, email marketing and SEO, among others.
So how do you properly identify your audience to be sure you’re catering your content and tone to the right crowd?
Identify (or create) customer profiles
One of the most critical pieces to your business, even outside of just the digital marketing space, is understanding who your target demographic is. If your business already has buyer/customer profiles, you can use these. Otherwise, it’s time to create these. This includes everything from the age and income of your target demographic to their interests, and how you can help solve their problems.
Find out where your customers are most active
Understanding where your customers are interacting on a daily basis is an incredibly important piece of your day-to-day marketing. Are your customers primarily interacting in Facebook groups? Are they a younger demographic shifting toward TikTok? Are they more active in email vs. social media?
Related: Creating relevant content for your social media channels »
By answering these questions, you can make more educated decisions in where to be spending your time, effort and money when it comes to reaching your ideal demographics.
Keep an eye on your competition
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Now, we’re not telling you to copy what your competition is doing … unless it’s working, of course. However, keeping an eye on how your competitors are marketing to their demographic can give you plenty of insight — both good and bad — in how you should shape your content marketing plans. If customers are responding and engaging (from what you can tell), it may be time to model your content after their’s … and if their content is underperforming, you’ll be able to identify what you shouldn’t be doing.
Survey your customers
Sometimes, the most simple way to understand what your customers want is to ask them directly. Utilizing surveys is a great way to discover the needs and pain points of your customers, help understand what type of marketing they may be looking for, and where they are most active in their daily lives.
Also Read: The importance of email marketing »
There are plenty of great services that allow you to create free surveys and deploy them via email, or you can use a service or agency (such as SmartSolutions) to create and deploy these surveys for you.
At SmartSolutions, our team can help assess your company’s marketing strategies and efforts and help you create a plan a comprehensive marketing plan for your business today.