4 Benefits of Knowing your Target Audience
You have surely heard, “you can’t be everything to everybody”, and this statement is evergreen, with the digital marketing era. As a small business, your product should be designed for a specific target audience, encountering a known issue. You might think hitting everybody with your product, is a good marketing strategy. Don’t fall into this trap, it is the surest path to bankruptcy.
Many businesses are launched without prior knowledge of their target audience, and target market. Gone are the days, where companies produced goods and then started advertising, on signboards or TVs, to attract their clients. Launching a product today requires that, you find the profitable target market, your product will serve, and tailor your product to their needs.
Should the target market analysis be new to your strategy, this post will make it a crucial point in your marketing roadmap.
1. Maximizing your Time and Resources
Just as a fast food has its ideal clients, the luxurious Asian restaurant, also has its target market. Defining the target market, that needs your services, will go a long way, to help you better understand it, and position your product or services accordingly. Unlike the wide say of “cast your net wide, to get as much as possible”, you will be hurting your marketing efforts, when chasing everybody. Realise, your message can’t resonate with the whole world, hence focusing your resources and time, for a clearly defined segment will be more productive and rewarding for your organization.
Past blue ocean niches are now crowded, given the ever-changing trends. How do you keep yourself in business, if you aren’t in tune with your ideal clients evolving needs? You run the risk, as a small business of going bankrupt, should you be unable to adapt to the changes.
Knowing the motivations your ideal clients have, in patronizing your services, will help focus your marketing strategy. Let’s say your small business produces luxurious products for newborns. Your sales and marketing team will be more successful at targeting only new parents, within a good income bracket. In other words, going after all new parents is a wrong use of your time and resources.
2. Your Competition Value Proposition
Successfully positioning your product in your niche, will require you to know what your competition offers. Since, products’ features are most of the times similar to a niche, your value proposition, and product benefits will help you entice your target audience. To get a share of your target niche will demand, that you fill the void your competitors are leaving out.
Even better, with bigger competitors, you will have to listen to the underserved audience and provide them unrivaled value. Remember, just like each move in the poker game, this will surely contribute to propelling you as an authority, within your industry.
To serve your niche with outright value requires you to conduct a proper target market analysis. Online marketing enables small businesses to compete with giants across the globe. Knowing your target audience gives you an edge to predict all their stages in your sales funnel, and meet them, at each level, for a successful conversion. You not only have a predictive sales cycle, you also build a tribe of rabid fans, whose lives are enhanced through your products. After all, how will you want them to be into you, if you don’t know what their ultimate goals are, in regard to your solution?
3. Investors Buy-In
From another angle, small businesses that desire to raise capital, need a clear roadmap, chartered in a business plan, with your potential end users. This business plan target market will show the investors, their projected ROI and your business growth, over a span of time. You can only provide an accurate business plan if you have conducted a proper target market analysis.
Studying previous data, within your industry, will enable you to find the profitable market segment and set realistic goals for your organization. On another level, your business potential growth, backed up with data, will be the determining factor for getting the investors buy-in or not. After all, no one aims to invest without the likelihood of an ROI.
4. Content Design and Social Media Marketing
Bricks and mortar businesses are now developing an online presence. This is justified, when, we know, 81% of buyers spent their time, online, reviewing products, prior to making a purchase. Your potential clients, come online with a search intent, and you can only be found if your website content appeals to their needs. How does it translate into your small business? The search engine will only show your website if you have used the matching terms, your target audience is accustomed to.
As you understand, this will only come from hanging out with them, in their preferred social media channel. It is a known fact, different channels appeal to different demographics, and the focus on your ideal clients’ channel will boost your marketing efforts.
Where do you get, information on your target audience, if you don’t know where they spend time online. It will reward you, to design your marketing strategy, based on your target audience hangout and behavior. For example, should busy stay at home moms, be your targeted market segment, designing white papers for their consumption will be a recipe for disaster.
Just like, traditional marketing, your ideal client, or buyer persona will motivate the buying decision. It then makes sense to have them in mind, while designing your offer. From your website to your email marketing campaigns, the copy needs to address your buyer persona concerns and your product’s benefits, as a remedy to their issues. Say, for instance, you are selling children games, where the target market is children, but the target audience is clearly their parents. Designing your copy will require that, you research and investigate on major concerns, dreams and desires parents have, prior to purchasing their kids’ games. Without having a message that resonates with these parents, you will fail at converting them into clients.
Bringing it all together, having a prior knowledge of your target audience, is the starting point for a successful online marketing. You can’t tailor a message, to an audience you have assumptions on, worst, know nothing about.
Picturing your ideal client, is a step forward, in having a predictive sales cycle.
This not only grows your sales, it will also quickly help position you as an authority in your niche, be it crowded or a virgin one. Now that, you know the benefits of knowing your target market, I want this post to be your springboard and jumpstart your target market research.
If you have done your market research, let me know in the comments, the efforts you have taken to know your ideal client. If otherwise, what actions steps will you be starting with, today?
