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When starting to build a marketing campaign, you should first define who your audience is. Who will you be talking to? Are there different audiences or can you tailor your content to a single group of people? Where should you place your ads? These questions may seem simple but, more often than not, they usually end up taking some time to answer precisely.
The difference between target market and target audience:
When you start building an online content strategy, it is important to understand the difference between your target market and your target audience. For example, if you sell children’s food, your target market is of a certain age, and so you should do your research and focus on understanding how big this market is and who your competition is.
In this case, however, your target audience is not the same as the market. When selling food for children or any other product for babies and toddlers, your target audience will probably be their parents as they are the decision makers. You will have to show why your product is good for their child and the benefits of choosing your product rather than that of the competition.
Here are a few questions you can ask to define your audience:
- Who will be buying my product/service?
- How old are they?
- What are some of their interests?
This will change not only the way you communicate with them, but also where you should communicate.
Selecting your communication channels
A common mistake many people end up making when building their online strategy is to create an account on every social platform there is. Although this is fairly usual and easy to understand why, you should really try to avoid it. Why? Ultimately, because you might end up talking to no one.
To select the correct channels for your business, you should pay attention to who your audience is and where they spend their time. Depending on their age, interests and nationality, they may be using different platforms and you need to understand that before creating any account. This is very relevant as we live in an era where there are endless social media platforms and if you choose to be on all of them, you will need an entire team to manage them. So if you have only limited resources, then start by selecting two or three platforms on which to focus your attention.
For example, if you are addressing teenagers, then Facebook will not be a good option for you, but Instagram and YouTube might be perfect. If, on the other hand, you are addressing parents and people aged 40 to 60, then Facebook will probably be a great option! Whatever platforms you choose, make sure to plan your presence by scheduling posts and defining their frequency so that you do not go two months without posting.
Also, keep in mind that while video is a great way to create engagement and a community, it demands a lot of your time, so take that into consideration if you are planning on producing video. It is better not to do it at all than to do it badly.
Create a persona
Finally, a good way to really understand who you should be talking to is creating a persona that symbolises your audience. To do this, you can start by giving your persona a name, job and age. After that, you can start building up your character by selecting hobbies and interests.
This may seem like an odd exercise, but it will help you visualise who you are talking to, so making it easier to choose your message and platforms. This will also help your entire team to know who your communication target is, as it is easier to talk about a specific person than about a big group of potential people that you do not really know.
If you have multiple audience groups, you should create a persona for each one. This will help you to better define your message and tone of voice, as you will be able to visualise who you are addressing and the differences between one audience and another.
To sum up, knowing your target audience will make your life much simpler in future, so make sure you take your time to define and perfect it. Try to be specific and think not only about their jobs but also what they do in their free time as this may be the key to getting through to them.
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