Really knowing your audience is central to understanding what strategies, media and messages you should put out. You’ve heard that before and it bears repeating…often. The better you know your audience, the more effective you can be when creating and promoting your content.

Recognizing your targets

What does your ideal customer look like? The better you can define your target, the more success you will have in hitting it, but you don’t have to make the definition impossible, either. Is your target a consumer or a business? Male or female? Age? Industry? Job title? Do they prefer to purchase with credit cards or purchase orders?

If you truly don’t have any definition, then start with some assumptions and test them methodically. Go with definitions you assign and see what happens when you alter the variables.

Improving your aim is a useful skill, even if you are shooting for the wrong target at first. As long as you are learning, good aim can be transferred to a different target.

Go where your targets are

Just start with what you know and work down to the finest detail that you can. Once you define your targets, you will also start to understand their behaviors. Place yourself – or your product – actively within their regular environment so they become aware of what you want to sell. Awareness is an essential first step to creating demand.

Websites, community events, social media channels, television, and industry conferences are some typical “places” your targets might take in information about the kinds of things you are selling. There are opportunities for every size of budget.

Don’t overlook your own education. If you go to where your targets are, you will be able to learn more and more ways to better define your targets, test your assumptions, and predict their activity.

Align with others who are targeting your customers

There are infinite ways to make this effective, from simple networking to aggressive endorsements or sponsorships. Just don’t rule out any opportunity to share the load and don’t forget to make the alignment mutually beneficial.

Guest blogging, active referrals, cross-promotional discounts, and networking events can all be used to reach the targets you share with other industries or companies.

Once you know the details of your key demographics, you will be able to move forward onto your marketing strategy. If you would like help defining your audience and crafting your marketing strategy, we would love to help you.

CALL US TO MAKE YOUR MARKETING WORK.

Sullivan Solutions LLC. 614.799.1670