You can shout at the top of your voice about how fabulous your products are. If you aren’t talking to the right people, you might as well be whispering. Figuring out the best ways to target customers and create the right message for your audience is one of the most crucial things you can do to increase brand awareness and ramp up revenue.
What Does It Mean to “Target” Customers?
Even if you don’t call it targeting, you likely already divide your audience into segments based on buying behavior, age, gender and other demographics. You can look at both demographic and psychographic elements to figure out how they might behave and what messages they’re most likely to respond to.
Around $616 billion dollars went into global digital advertising last year. By 2027, the number is predicted to pass one trillion dollars a year. All those dollars pouring into marketing means there’s a lot of noise. You must get the right message to the correct people at the best time to get the most from your investment.
4 Methods of Targeting Customers
When targeting customers, you can use a number of different methods. Here are the four top strategies used by PR professionals.
Mass Marketing
Undifferentiated marketing aims to please the masses. It really isn’t a segmented form of marketing. it might work for something cheap where you need to reach the most people possible to get the word out. However, it is highly ineffective at reaching target customers.
Segmented Marketing
Segmenting your audience is the top way to target the right customers. You should start with a buyer persona for each type of customer. Give the persona a name, personality and behaviors so you can align your marketing with it.
Niche Marketing
Experts estimate e-commerce grew about 14.3% following the pandemic. Many people order online who didn’t before. Knowing about niche marketing options helps you segment your audience even more and base your advertising on things such as past products bought.
One example of niche marketing would be taking one pain point and offering a solution with a product or service.
Micromarketing
If you want to make it even more specific, you can market to a specific buyer with a specific solution. Micromarketing works really well with social media where you can target individuals by geolocation and behaviors.
Now that you know the differences between marketing styles, here are some of the best ways to better target customers.
1. Survey Your Customers
Statista recently noted customer experience (CX) and personalization software revenue rose from $7.61 billion in 2021 to 8.28 billion in 2022. It’s predicted to rise to over $9 billion this year and $11.6 billion by 2026.
Poll your customers and ask them which types of ads and communication they prefer most. What types of offers work for them? Is there anything they need that you aren’t meeting?
The more information you gather, the better you’ll be able to target your customers with the products and offers they need.
2. Map Your Customer Journey
Does your website target customers where they are? Map out your customer journey. Where does the person go when they land on a page? What is the next step in the sales funnel?
As you map out the buyer’s journey for each persona, you’ll see things you can improve to raise conversions. Spend time trying different types of calls to action (CTAs) and other things to draw users where you want them to go and get results. Conduct some split testing to see what works best.
3. Identify Industry Trends
Know what is popular in your industry. What do your competitors offer that you don’t? How can you ramp up your efforts and match or exceed customer expectations?
If you aren’t already following your competitors on social media, you should start today. While you should never copy another brand, you can see what holes are in your own marketing and product offerings and fix them.
Talk to any customers who come to you from the competitor. What do they miss that you can help with? The more you know, the better you can serve all your customers and possibly attract new ones.
4. Improve Communication
Look for ways to improve customer engagement. Doing something as simple as adding a chatbot can improve customer engagement 90% or more.
Are most of your customers from Gen-Z? Perhaps you should offer SMS to solve product issues. On the other hand, if the majority of your clients are baby boomers, you might want to ensure people can talk to a live person on the phone as some won’t want to get online or deal with new technology to troubleshoot.
Look for ways to speak to people in the language they best understand no matter what methods you use to target them.
5. Figure Out Who They Aren’t
While you want buyer personas and a firm understanding of who your target customers are, you also need to know who they aren’t. Spend time writing out the qualities your current audience does not have.
For example, if you sell smoke alarms, your current customers are likely homeowners between the ages of 20 and 80. However, if it is a high-tech alarm system, you might have a large segment of customers who are 20 to 30 years old.
By eliminating some of your audience, you are better able to push ads to those most likely to buy from you. You’ll save money on advertising and get higher conversion rates.
Make Targeting Customers Part of Your Company Culture
Everything you do in your business should think about your buyer personas and how changes affect them and their experience. Will a new product enhance their lives? How? Will raising costs knock your typical buyer out of purchasing from you? What is the impact looking out ahead five years, ten years and beyond?
When you put customers at the core of everything you do, you’re much more likely to find smart ways to market them. Rather than losing people to competitors, they’ll develop loyalty to your brand and tell everyone they know. Make it your top priority to target customers and improve communication with them.
