How to Target Your Most Valuable Customers
In marketing, there’s a big difference between reaching out to an audience and reaching out to the right audience. Whenever you send a message without paying attention to who’s receiving, it’s a wasted exercise. They’re likely not interested, and the effort won’t generate campaign conversions.
How do you reach out to the right people? How do you entice them and ensure that they go into business with you rather than a competitor?
1. Choose Your Perfect Target Audience for Facebook, IG, Google and any other ads platform
First of all, how can you do anything without first defining your audience? Without breaking down a target market, you’re essentially resorting to the old days of leaflets and radio ads when nobody embraced targeting strategy for attracting the right customers. Today, it’s possible to refine our marketing and ONLY target those with interest…take advantage of this. You no longer need to waste huge portions of your budget.
To start, we recommend building a customer persona, or a profile of your average customer. Who is your ideal buyer and what is it about them that makes them perfect for your products and services? Once you’re able to identity the key features of your average customer, it’s easier to reach out to similar people. Write down their attributes, demographics, preferences, and more.
2. Learn About Your Audience
Now that you have the ‘right’ audience, it’s time to learn every little detail. Thanks to Google Search Console and Analytics, Facebook Insights, and plenty of other tools, we can learn more about their:
• Relationship status
• Location
• Age
• Purchasing habits
• Interests
• Shopping behaviors
The deeper you go, the more insights you’re likely to find. When it comes to campaign conversions, the most successful brands are often the ones that generate content that resonate with their audience. They take the time to learn their audience, and then create content with the right keywords and messages to generate results.
3. Create Content
However, just creating content isn’t good enough. You need to create genuinely useful and relevant content that speaks to the reader. At this point, we know some things about our audience, including who they are and what they find important. Now, we need to put this information to good use.
With so many options, it can be somewhat overwhelming when you first decide to start creating content. However, we see this choice as a great thing because it means you can select the type that will get the best results. If you aren’t sure, test over time to see what type of content gets the best reaction and engagement. Here are three popular types:
• Blog Posts — Blog posts and articles are still relevant as ever because we can target specific keywords, depending on where consumers are in the funnel, and guide them towards our service. Whether the customer wants to learn more about your niche or is comparing companies, your content speaks volumes for the wider company. With the right content, you can position yourself as a market leader.
• Video Marketing — These days, videos are becoming more popular because they’re more engaging than text-based content. Also, with explainer videos and the like, consumers like to put a face to the brand. Especially with the growth of social media, videos catch the attention of people when they’re scrolling through their feeds. As long as you hold this attention in the first five or ten seconds, your brand gets the exposure it deserves.
- Social Media Content — On the likes of Facebook and Instagram, we have scope to produce text, videos, images, or a combination of all three in our marketing strategy. What’s more, we can reply to questions instantly and work on boosting our brand reputation.
Elsewhere, you might even consider:
• Podcasts
• Industry interviews
• Snapchat
• LinkedIn (professional content)
• Case studies
• eBooks
• Infographics
As long as the information is relevant to your audience, you’re resonating with the right people… those who will have an interest in the company.
4. Speak to YOUR Audience
This might sound obvious, but you won’t believe the number of times we’ve seen businesses use the wrong tone, language, and style in their content. If you want to target and acquire your most valuable customers, you need to speak in a way that the audience recognizes and follows. For example, a formal language isn’t going to go down too well when your products are aimed at teens and early adulthood. Likewise, using slang and an informal tone would be inappropriate for businessmen and women.
As you get started, it’s important to consider the audience and what they look for in content. If you consider this very guide, we’re trying to inform businesses and individuals who want to target and acquire customers. We’re speaking rather formally because it’s an important topic, but it’s also conversational (it doesn’t need to be boring!) This way, you’re learning about acquiring customers, but hopefully in a way that’s accessible and not too heavy.
5. Utilize Keywords
Next up, if we’re going to draw people in with content, keywords are essential. As mentioned previously, this is where we need to think about the different stages of the buying process and funnel. While some will be suited towards those learning more about the industry, others will be required for those ready to spend money. Ultimately, it comes down to user intent. There are three main types of keywords:
• Informational — The user isn’t necessarily aware that a solution exists at this point, just a problem. They’re discovering your corner of the market and are performing some basic research.
• Navigational — Further down the funnel, these keywords need to accommodate those who now have a foundational knowledge. Instead, they’re looking for a brand or product. They know what they want, but they aren’t yet ready to spend money.
• Transactional — Finally, this is where the customer is ready to buy…it’s your time to shine. For example, when looking for a diary, they might use ‘buy 2019 diary’ or something similar. Learn the buying keywords for your niche and ensure you have content that leverages these keywords.
6. Try Targeted Advertising
Since this is all about reaching out to a specific audience, what better way to do so than with targeted advertising? You know your audience, now you can use social media ads or Google ads with a message that resonates and attracts them to the brand. These days, we can create campaigns based on location, audience interests, demographics, and much more.
With targeted advertising, one of the biggest benefits is that only those within the parameters of your filter will be shown your ad. Suddenly, you aren’t wasting time, money, and effort on those with no interest. If we take Facebook as an example, their targeting platform seems to get better with every year that passes. With their advanced analytics tools, we can optimize our campaigns over time and ensure that we’re always hitting the right audience.
7. Don’t Be Afraid to Retarget
In the earlier stages of the funnel, prospective customers come across your content, but they’re unlikely to spend money on the spot. Fortunately, we have retargeting for this very case. We don’t want to lose their interest, so we launch a retargeting campaign and bring them back when they are ready to spend.
Again, our options here are almost limitless because we can run retargeting on Google Display Network, AdWords, and through social media platforms like Facebook. According to CMO, those who have visited a website and are then retargeted with display ads are more likely to convert; not only are they more likely, they’re 70% more likely. Considering these customers would have otherwise been lost, this is a brilliant ROI.
8. Referral Marketing
Shouting about your own business is one thing, but having customers shout on your behalf is even stronger. With a referral program, you can encourage customers to tell their friends, family, and colleagues about your business. For every customer they bring in, they receive a small discount on their next order.
As long as the incentive is worthwhile, this is a system where everybody wins:
• The existing customer gets a discount
• Your business gets a new customer
• The new customer gets a product they need
In fact, you could even offer the discount to both parties for an even greater bonus.
Summary
Whether you’re looking for campaign conversions or referral marketing, we hope you’ve learned something about targeting and acquisition to help you in your strategy.
Assuming you understand your target market and can reach out to the right audience, the world is your oyster. Don’t waste your budget on generalized marketing techniques when you can refine your search and grow your business with those who need it most.
Bonus! Marketing Tools:
2. Bilbi AI: Daily Marketing Campaign Insights
