Stay on Target

Hi-a kiddos! We've dug into social media and other aspects of marketing and advertising, so how about the tough part? Actually identifying your target?

In hindsight, I really should have done a posting on this a lot sooner, but hey better late than never right?

Identifying your target audience and market sounds like it should be pretty obvious, and it is. We often get a product or service in our head and immediately think of one or two kinds of people who we can target our ad campaigns and marketing for. However more often that not in that initial thought, we forget all about different niche's we can target; or exactly what other things those initial targets like or don't like.

Understanding your audience completely is the single most important element when designing a successful campaign, otherwise you've gone off half cocked and aren't being as effective as you possibly can; or you end up trying to be all things to all people and in the end it's so bland and forgettable the sales numbers are abysmal; or you completely miss the mark and lose a ton of money. Knowing what media outlets your target audience uses as well as their general behavior patterns is also key.

A focus group can help you decide exactly what kinds of people to target.
Image taken from Meta Connects

Also keep in mind that as Charly Leetham states, your real target audience are the people that are going to make purchases. If people are talking about your campaign, that's great news, but if they're just talking about how bad it is, those aren't sales conversions; if anything, your advertising is repelling customers at that point. Not all press is good press.

Johanna Blackley's Ted Talk brings up an interesting point as well on how gender lines are starting to blur in terms of social media and thus social media marketing:





While gender targeting may be fading in social media, there are still a ton of other factors you can use to narrow your focus:

First, install google analytics on your website (or your clients) as this will track what kinds of people are browsing your site as well as basic information such as how much traffic your getting and when and where you're getting it.
Is most of your traffic is from women ages 18-24 in non-US? It's probably a good idea to think about a campaign to cater to and target that group.

From there you can leverage focus groups to understand exactly what they think and want, or various on-line resources that can give you statistics on a website and what their on-line audience is. Obviously you can then utilize this information to see what kinds of people competitors websites are drawing in and work on ways to target them yourself.

This said, next time you watch TV and see an advertisement, don't change the channel. Watch it, study it. Then ask yourself: "Who's the target?"