Do you know who your target audience is?
With a world full of customers, the first thing you need to do is to determine the target audience for your business. When you market your business, the biggest mistake you could make is thinking that your product is for everyone.
Don’t shoot without aiming. If you want to succeed and grow your business, you have to define who your ideal customers are with as much detail as possible. Create stories that engage your visitors and get them to take action. To do that you should follow our 6 steps to target your audience more effectively.
How do you find your target audience?
Your online businesses probably has a flow of irrelevant traffic on your websites. Many businesses use the latest tools and techniques to help them drive traffic to their platforms, if only for a few seconds. Conversion rates from that type of traffic is in most cases is negligible.
Using basic SEO skills coupled with a good content strategy you could get many random hits quickly. But they would be of less value than a small number of hits from users who are actually looking for your services or product.
Focus your time and energy into reaching out to those who are actually looking for what your business offers.
Define your target audience
Defining the target audience for your business will assist your business strategies in many ways. It saves you time and prevents you from wasting your marketing energy reaching a larger but less interested audience.
The result is that you can generate the same revenue with less resources if you know what your target audience is looking for.
Who is your target audience?
You have to understand your target audience
Your online target audience is different from your real world audience. You don’t have the same interactions with customers online as you would if they walked into your physical location.
Your perceptions from a customers behavior and personality that you meet provides information that is unavailable during an online encounter. The challenge is to develop the same insights during an online transaction.
Imagine you have an online store for sportswear. It’s important that you understand the lifestyle and behavior of people who follow sports on a regular basis.
If you are a fan of what you’re selling in your store it would be easier to make assumptions about what your customer desires. This removes the need for basic research as you already know what, how and when your customers want your product.
Can you picture your customer?
In our example, as an online store for sportswear, you should have an understanding of your online target market. Make an individual profile for every type of user that visits your online store.
Once you determine who you have to focus on, your marketing decisions will become much easier. You will be able to selectively target a group of similar customer profiles.
How are your customers segmented?
Using the customer profiles you created, you can begin to categorize your online target audience. Use demographical information, such as name, address, user behavior etc.
Today’s practices suggest that businesses should catalog their customers’ lifestyle, profession, and needs that are not being met. This helps online businesses engage their visitors helping you to create your promotional messages.
How can you use your customer feedback?
Successful entrepreneurs develop business driving strategies while interacting with their customers. It is common practice to try to record customer feedback immediately after your business with them is completed.
You can even take it a step further. Offer a brief welcoming survey to new users. This will help you to learn their needs before the process even begins. Your data generated from surveys and customer feedback can be graphically displayed to see where your online business stands and which segment can be improved.
In addition, due to regular communication with customers, you can also ask them to write reviews of your product or service on public forums.
Do you understand your promoters?
Once you’ve identified your online target audience, the next step is to determine who the promoters of your brand are. Customer promoters advocate for your business and help popularize your brand via word of mouth advertising. They tell their friends….
You have to leverage this satisfied segment of your user base and educate it to build a strong referral base. If you want to accomplish this, offer incentives and perks to your promoters.
Stalk Your Competitors
This is one of the most important details that businesses need to take care of. It is common practice among industry giants to track their competitors and their strategies.
This practice can be seen in everyday life. Look at the example of a hand sanitizer that claims to wash away 99.9% of germs from your hands. In response, a competitor launched an improved hand sanitizer that does the same in less time.
Understand Your Competition
Similarly, online businesses need to be aware of products and services being used by their competitors. Sometimes, it is the same product or service, just the difference of strategy used in marketing to the right audience.
Therefore, keeping track of competitor’s audience is an efficient way of knowing what market should you take care of
Evaluate Your Digital Efforts
Now that you know how to find your eCommerce target audience, it’s about time to evaluate your business plan and consider a few things. Would your target market benefit from your products? Would they truly benefit from it’s existence? How can you trigger them to make the buying decision?
What Drives Your Customer’s Decision Making
Determine what drives the decision making among your potential customers and how often they can afford to do business with you? Answering these questions should help you prepare your business strategy for your online businesses target audience.
