From correctly understanding your customer to having a good idea of their lifestyle, we asked industry experts for strategies to help reach your specific target market. Here are ten answers to the question, “What are your most effective tips for successfully reaching your specific target market?”
- Know Thy Customer
- Pay Attention to the Early Data
- Incorporate SEO
- Align Content Closely to Your Target Audience
- Leverage Influencers in the Target Market
- Grow With the Audience
- Look at Other Brands in the Same Market
- Build Thematic Overlap With Target Market Preferences
- Target Competitors’ Customers via Technographic Data
- Understand their Lifestyle
Know Thy Customer
Lorraine Bossé-Smith, the Chief Solutions Officer at Concept One, states, “Although we have multiple channels to reach our target customers. We must first know our customers intimately.
If you are tracking “likes” on social media, but your customers don’t frequent social media, it will not generate the results you seek. Sure, you will gain some name recognition, but if it is with people who don’t have the money or inclination to purchase your products or services, is it really driving your business?
A one-size-fits-all approach never works, and in the age of technology, it is even more critical to drill down to the specific traits and behaviors of your customer. Who are they? What are they looking for? What do they need? And most importantly, where are they?”
Pay Attention to the Early Data
Founder and CEO of Allara, Rachel Blank, shares her insight, “Before businesses launch, they do test studies. They send out feelers. Think of it as the equivalent of a restaurant’s soft opening. Pay close attention to the data.
Who is buying your product? Does it elicit more interest from women than men? Does it attract a 50-and-older crowd? Are you drawing interest from a specific demographic? If so, that’s probably the target demo you should be after.
Craft your marketing and advertising accordingly. If you want to be more appealing to a different demographic, you should come up with a new strategy. Take a deep dive into the data points at the very start. Don’t wait until you’re at full speed because it will be much harder to shift gears.”
Incorporate SEO
Karim Hachem, an E-commerce VP, explains why search engine optimization is an amazing tool to use, “SEO is an effective digital marketing strategy for any business. Not only will SEO increase a company’s domain rating, creating a more substantial online presence, but it allows businesses to engage with their target customers and deliver their tone of voice uniquely.
Companies that feature a blog on their website will benefit the most from this strategy. This puts the brand as a credible source of information.”
Align Content Closely to Your Target Audience
Chief People and Culture Officer, Piotrek Sosnowski, expand his knowledge for aligning content closer to your target audience, “Crafting marketing for specific target audiences and making it stick is no simple task. One surefire tip for successful marketing to a specific target market is to deliver communication in a tailored, authentic tone of voice that reflects the needs and interests of that demographic.
By customizing content to their lived experience, businesses ensure engagement, build trust, and develop customer loyalty. In marketing, targeted messaging is key; personalized customer outreach opens up an entire world of opportunities for businesses eager to reach their desired goals.
With the right plan, marketing to a specific target market doesn’t have to be difficult—it just takes some research and a creative approach!”
Leverage Influencers in the Target Market
Digital Marketing Manager, Yogesh Kumar, emphasizes leveraging influencers, “Influencers can market your brand to the target audience quickly and effectively. Likewise, you can attain many marketing goals at once with the help of influencer marketing. But make sure you choose influencers wisely that can somehow relate to your business and your target audience. It will save marketing your product from sounding unreal.
Define what type of videos the influencer should make for product promotion. A little focus on selecting an influencer and writing the script will surely help you reach a specific target market in a short time.”
Grow With the Audience
CEO Max Ade, has some insight about growth, “Your audience isn’t a thing set in stone; they’re people, and people change. Collectively, that means an audience’s tastes will change as well.
If you want to continue to reach your audience competently, then you need to be ready to change right along with them. This will require your business to do frequent and comprehensive market research. You want to stay on top of what trends and techniques are best for reaching your particular audience.
Don’t just focus on common trends, either; while they will give you some traction, it’s the unique methods by which you reach your audience that will make you stand out in their minds and keep them engaged. Keep your marketing efforts in line with your audience, and your business will always be ready to pivot when new trends come along.”
Look at Other Brands in the Same Market
Founder and CEO at Evinex, Carlos Trillo, analyzes the importance of looking at other brands in the same market, “Look at how previous brands or businesses with similar target markets have achieved success. Being able to grasp how these companies used their resources or how they presented themselves to their target market can give you a better idea of how you should present your product.
Ultimately, successful targeting will come down to having a clear understanding of how to make your product appealing and tailored directly to the specific market that you are attempting to reach.”
Build Thematic Overlap With Target Market Preferences
Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder, Tali Ditye, Ph.D., shares her experience, “Our business focuses on a highly specific target market that includes pregnancy, parenting, and families intending to purchase baby products. Over the past 15 years, we have worked hard to define, segment, and reach customers using traditional marketing and advertising tools.
We have also found that creating thematic overlap with the preferences, viewpoints, and emotions of our target market is critical. When we generate ad copy or informational content, we consider likely emotional states that consumers are in, whether the niche market has associated colors or patterns, a specialized vernacular, or if there is a tendency for customers to come from certain regions or hold specific views.
Going beyond traditional market segmentation practices based on age, gender, and location can be difficult, but it can also be precious for guiding content development, motivating your target audience, and driving consumer behavior.”
Target Competitors’ Customers via Technographic Data
Vito Vishnepolsky, a Founder and Director in the industry, encourages targeting competitors’ customers, “One of our favorite ways to reach a specific target market for our clients is by combining technographic data with competitor research. This method is especially useful in highly saturated markets like SaaS, where competitive advantage is the only way to set your brand apart.
By using review sites like G2, Clutch, and Capterra to collect feedback from competitors’ customers, you can develop highly engaging messages for account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns that target your ideal clients who currently use a competitor’s solutions.
We recommend segmenting campaigns based on the technographic data of your ideal prospects so you can pinpoint product-specific problems and propose personalized solutions without naming your competitors.
On average, ABM competitor campaigns like these through email, LinkedIn, and phone calls have doubled or tripled conversion rates for our clients.”
Understand their Lifestyle
Executive Recruiter, Jamie McCann, describes the importance of understanding your target market’s lifestyle, “Bob Dylan was right; the answer is blowing in the wind. Reaching a desired target audience requires truly understanding the target audience’s lifestyle.
Today’s consumers are much more flighty. In yesteryear, the only avenues were to put a commercial on one of the three television networks and/or a print ad in a favorite magazine.
Today, the fragmented media landscape makes it difficult to capture the target audience’s wallet. Social, mobile, experiential, website, hundreds of TV networks, satellite radio, and enthusiast magazines are all available to promote your product/service. Your message must be laser-like focused with a simple message and on a desirable media platform.
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Special thanks to Featured for their continued help in the creation of this blog post. Click below for more strategies from the Nativa team regarding Online Marketing.
