Digital marketing is by far one of the most effective forms of marketing these days. With so many people spending so many hours on their digital devices, there are lots of different channels that can effectively be used to get your marketing message through to them.
Many digital marketers make the mistake of thinking that they should target everyone. Sadly, this strategy usually doesn’t work out. Whatever your product or service is, there’s probably only a narrow group of people that it would appeal to. It’s very important to understand who that group is exactly.
This article will present a few solutions on how you can get to know your target audience better!
Research competitors
There’s nothing wrong with looking at your competitors and copying them a bit. If you’re a new brand in your industry, check out some of your most successful competitors. According to their tone of voice and overall style and design of their brand and website, you can get a good picture of who exactly they’re targeting.
Scrape the web
One of the best ways to gather as much data on your target audience as possible is by using a web scraper. This is a tool that allows you to scan vast amounts of data across the web for specific information. For example, you can use a web scraper to gather information about buying behavior, pricing, reviews, and even forum thread discussions relevant to your industry. All of this information will help you piece together who your target audience is and what they need.
Develop a buyer persona
As you gather more and more data on who your target customer is, you should create and adjust your buyer persona. This means developing a version of a member of your target audience and pretending that they’re a real person. For example, you can even give your buyer persona a name and address to make them feel like a real person.
This will help you in various stages of marketing. Whenever you’re developing a marketing message, you can imagine that you’re talking with your buyer persona. This is a much easier way to adapt to your target audience than by trying to speak with a crowd of people simultaneously. Your message will be read by many people, but they’ll all be reading it individually, so make sure the recipient of the marketing message feels like you’re speaking directly to them.
Keep track of comments and reviews
This may seem like an obvious step, but many companies fail to properly keep track of their own comments and reviews. You should always listen to what your customers are saying to see what’s working and what’s not, and you can then adjust your marketing strategy in response to this information.
Explore new strategies
Most digital marketers don’t succeed at their first attempt. You can never fully predict how your customers will react to one marketing message as opposed to another, so you shouldn’t be afraid to experiment with new tactics!
However, do this smartly. Whenever you make any changes to your marketing strategy, monitor everything carefully. See which types of ads or posts receive the highest engagement and success. Once you begin to spot patterns in specific posts that are performing better than others, start focusing on them throughout your whole digital marketing strategy.
Send out surveys
This is one of the most obvious ways to get to know your customer, but it’s also the most direct and sometimes annoying way. It’s always best to try and get as much information about your customers without actually bothering them, but if you feel you still lack proper information, try sending out surveys to your customers.
However, keep in mind that only a small number of people you send the survey to will actually answer it. Most won’t want to waste their time on something that isn’t of any benefit to them. That’s why you should consider offering your respondents a gift card, coupon, or anything else to incentivize them.
Final thoughts
The tools to create a digital marketing strategy are available to everyone. But not everyone is capable of producing a good strategy that will bring actual results. If you think your digital marketing strategy isn’t performing as well as it could and needs some improvement, then the tips mentioned in this article are a great way to start. By putting in some extra time and effort and staying patient, you’ll build an excellent strategy in no time!
