How often have you received marketing communications that were of no interest to you whatsoever? Fairly often, we’d guess. The most common marketing mistake made by businesses is to throw away money on marketing their product or service to people who will never be interested in it.
Everyone is not your customer
Everyone is not your customer, and the sooner this becomes the mantra behind your marketing campaigns, the better. The most successful marketing campaigns target a specific audience. Very few products and services have mass market appeal, so it’s important to identify exactly who you want to sell to so that you can focus your marketing efforts on them. This approach is much more likely to deliver results and a return on your investment than an untargeted ‘spray and pray’ campaign.
How to define your target audience
The first step is to identify and list your target customers. For example, a recruitment agency would have a minimum of two target audiences; candidates looking for new roles and businesses who need help with recruitment. You could probably break these down a bit more – for instance if the recruitment agency specialised in recruiting for engineering roles in the South West of England, they would perhaps group candidates into three separate audiences:
- Experienced engineers already living in the South West looking for new roles.
- Experienced engineers living elsewhere who are keen to move to the South West.
- Graduate engineers willing to move to the area to start their career.
Developing personas
Once you have identified your target customers, personas are a useful tool to build up a more complete picture of your audiences. A persona brings each audience to life as a fictional person. Although it can seem like a lot of effort, working through this exercise can help make sure your marketing is targeting the right people in the right place. Try developing a persona to represent each of your target audiences. Think about:
- Who they are. What is their name, where do they live, how old are they and where do they work? What is a day in their life like?
- What are their problems? Thinking in relation to your product or service, what are the problems they face?
- Which problems do you solve for them? How do you solve those problems?
- Where do they hang out? Where will you find them – this could be online or offline. What websites and magazines do they read? What events do they attend?
You may be able to use existing customers to inform your personas, or if it is a new audience, you may have to do some research.
Grow your business with marketing
Identifying target customers is just one part of an effective marketing strategy – we create integrated marketing packages using many marketing channels for our clients. Contact us today to take your business to the next level.
