What is the importance of identifying your target market ahead of your digital marketing campaign?
Just like any other endeavour, you need to have an aim and an objective in mind.
If you don’t have a target market, you don’t know who you are marketing to, and your strategies may begin to lose their way.
Identifying your target market helps you to develop effective marketing communication strategies that are geared towards securing high-level returns on your investment.
What is a “target market”?
A target market is a set of individuals who are united by common characteristics or needs. It is up to your company to serve these needs and to position yourself as a business that is aligned with these characteristics.
But these are not just any individuals. This is a set of individuals who are likely to purchase your product or connect with your services. In this sense, choosing which sector of your audience to target is a tricky — and important — process.
How to nail your target market
There are many ways of identifying your target market, but following tried-and-tested steps gives you the best chance of finding the perfect approach.
1. Define your ideal target
Let’s start at the beginning — your product or service. Define exactly what this product or service is, and then consider what problems it can solve and who would need this. This ‘problem and solution’ approach provides you with an idealised customer that you can use to build your buyer persona, giving you something to aim for as you begin your strategy.
2. Craft target-specific messages
Now you can begin to focus your efforts on this ideal set of audience members. What sort of messaging do you think would resonate most profoundly with this audience? What kind of content do they want to see? What is going to engage them and drive them towards conversion? With the knowledge you have already gained from considering your ideal target, this process becomes far more focused and effective.
3. Reach the right audience
Great messaging is only truly great if it is reaching the right eyes and ears. Go back to your ideal target market and think about who they are and what their objectives are. This will help you to reach them in the right way. Consider the kinds of social platforms they are using, think about how they interact with businesses and aim to get your message through to the right audience.
4. Aim for quality over quantity
In an ideal world, you want to reach a gap in the market — providing a solution that no one else has thought of before. In reality, this is difficult, but you can still identify customer needs that are not being adequately served. Focus your resources on identifying this area of the market and targeting it. Don’t stretch your resources too thinly, and remember that a small segment of highly engaged customers is better than a vast segment of uninterested users.
5. Be strategic with advertising
Advertising is not free. You will need to invest some of your marketing budget in covering the cost of pay per click — or PPC — ads, for example. However, it can be very fruitful indeed, and its power is on the up. Data from Q2 of 2020 suggests that Facebook ad revenue is growing by 10% year on year, as increasing numbers of businesses target customers on the social media platform.
This does not mean that you should adopt a blanket strategy, however. Be cost-savvy with advertising, identifying the platforms that best suit your target audience, and focusing your efforts on these.
Why you need a target market strategy
Let’s take a look at why a digital marketing target market strategy is so important to your business.
1. Improve media buying decisions
With your strategy in place, all of your media buying strategies will integrate with this broader plan.
2. Become smart with reaching your audience
You can’t reach the right audience without a clear objective in mind. Your target market strategy will provide this objective.
3. Reduce marketing expenses
Your strategy will tell you that you don’t need to target everyone. Instead, you can focus your attention, and your budget, in the right areas.
4. Get business presentation right
Understanding your target market will help you to present your business and its messaging in the right way.
5. Boost research and development success
As your target market profile takes shape, these customers will provide you with crucial feedback that you can use to get more from the process. Improve your existing products and develop new ones to serve this market.
Don’t Forget Your Target Market
Without direction — without an aim — we are lost. This is certainly true in marketing.
Take the time to identify your target market, and reap the rewards.
