Targeting your ideal customers is an important part of any successful business strategy. Identifying your ideal customer will help you understand where your products fit into their lives and how to reach them.

Online marketing solutions only work when you know your Target Audience

Any online marketing solutions are aided by knowing the customers or target audience that is being targeted. Establishing who belongs to your target audience is vital for honing your digital marketing strategy. If you don’t have that information, it’s like firing off a hundred arrows into the dark and crossing your fingers that at least one hits the target.

And sometimes, it might feel like you are shooting into the dark because businesses accessed through digital content are different to a customer physically accessing a shop.  In the physical shop scenario, an employee or assistant is actively engaging with a customer, finding out who they are and at the same time thinking about a business’ product and how it can cater to a customer.

In the digital scenario, a customer is accessing content without any mediation on the part of the business. Thus, content has to be somehow already tailored to the customer.

In those cases, knowing who your customers are helps to guide specific digital marketing campaigns.  Once armed with a complete knowledge of a target audience or who your customers are, it is easier to tailor a marketing strategy accordingly.  However, defining the target audience is a job in itself. 

Define your target audience

Of course, there are many ways to define your target audience.  Here’s just a couple to get you started: 

• Surveys - get into some market research and establish some customer demographics.  This can extend from age, gender, income level,  right through to learning about customer behaviours such as:  how they spend their time online; what websites they visit; what social media platforms they use; what apps they download; and what devices they own.  This provides valuable data for determining how you can target your audience.  For example, if your customer uses a PC, but not mobile devices, you are unlikely to market to them through an app.  

• Create customer personas - a customer persona is the profile of a generic customer.  So this might include an age range, where they live, what they enjoy doing in their spare time, what their goals are etc.   You can use the survey data of your current customers to help generate a few different personas. This information helps to tailor your digital marketing strategy while remembering the human face of your customers - they are not simply data sets. Check out this blog for more information and templates on how to create a customer persona.

Find out your customers’ pain points

Pain points help to focus a business or service on what your customer really wants or needs and helps to set a business apart from competitors; this is the nitty gritty of what a customer really wants. 

Some pain points might be fairly generic such as looking to reduce costs, increase efficiency or looking for a product that is cheaper than what a customer currently has.  Or the pain point might be more specific, such as looking for a product that can be delivered that day. 

Whatever the motivation or reason for the pain points, this is where a marketing strategy begins from -  there is no point in having the biggest, flashiest marketing campaign if it is irrelevant to the customer.  For some more ideas about customer pain points and for a bit of a giggle, check out Turbine Creative’s piece. 

What’s your competitor up to?

Get an understanding of what the competition is doing.  In this sense, businesses need to gauge what their competitors are offering and, importantly, offer something that their competitors aren’t.  To take this back to a customer’s pain point, does a competitor, for example, offer same-day delivery?  If not, this indicates an opportunity for a business to address a pain point and provide an alternative.  

Another way to approach this is by thinking about what your competitors do. Make a list and answer these questions:

• What is their offer? The product or service they are promoting. What’s good about it? What attribute or feature attracts a customer to buy it?

• How are they promoting it? Which online and/or offline channels are they using?

• The pricing strategy they have adopted. Is it a premium price point? Is it always on sale?

• The customers they are targeting

When we can answer this, we are much better placed to identify where gaps exist and where you can adapt your strategy to attract your ideal target audience.

Have a positioning strategy

A positioning strategy is a marketing strategy which distinguishes a business from another.  In short, what can a business offer its customers and what does a customer remember a company by? MasterClass offer a number of points on which to base a positioning strategy, including: 

• Product price - how is a business positioning product price in relation to a competitor?

• Competitive positioning - how is a product unique when compared to others.  For example your business offers a guarantee on a product and a competitor doesn’t.  

• Unique value - what are the special features and benefits of your product or service?  

Understand the benefits of your product

Features of a product are different to the benefits of a product.  For example, if you sell light bulbs, your customer likely understands that lightbulbs have a filament, glass and they emit light; those are the features of your product. 

As much as a business might like those features and be proud of them, your customer also wants to know the benefits to them.  For example, a light bulb can generate a particular mood or might be used in a cosy nook for reading. So are you selling filaments and glass or are you selling a constellation of lights?  Get imaginative!

Thus the benefits appeal to what your customer is looking for, that is, what’s in it for your customer.  In short, features display what your product or service does and benefits display what a product can do for your customer.  For more great illustrations of features vs. benefits, check out Convertful and begin to think creatively about how your product benefits your customers.  

Need more help?

If you’re unsure where to start or your current online marketing solutions aren’t achieving the desired results, reach out! We’re keen to ensure business owners are getting the right solutions for their business. Avoid throwing your marketing out into the universe and hoping something will stick. Let’s have a conversation to help move your marketing.