Looking To Market Your Business?
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Well Look No further! Wait…actually…keep reading
It’s so easy to dive into marketing your business and just starting throwing up Facebook ads, blog posts and a website. But please, take a minute and figure out who the hell is your target market. Seriously. We are not joking. Take a second to think about your ideal buyer.* que dream sequence*
Ok, have a better idea of that ideal customer? Good. Because If you don’t take the time to understand your customer, sadly, you’re just wasting all your time and money with ads and content that will do nothing but confuse your potential customers. Invest in building your brand first. With name recognition comes the buzz that will drive your sales.
Identifying Your Current Target Market
Defining your target market is really just identifying who you’re trying to sell to. It all starts with your current customers. Ask yourself (or better yet, ask your customers if you have them) some key questions:
- Are they mainly men or women?
- Age?
- Married, single, engaged?
- Where do they live?
- What’s their income (or budget for your product)?
- What types of content do they like to consume? Blogs, videos, podcasts?
- What social media channels do they use? How often?
- What do they do in their free time? Workout? Watch TV? Go to games? Shop?
Let’s look at a company that makes women’s clothing. Their target market might be women from 18-30 that are married with a few kids. They live in the Philly area and spend most of their time on Facebook.
Speaking To Your Target Market
Now that you have a picture of your target market, you can start marketing to their specific needs. Since you’re looking to sell clothing to moms that are juggling kids and a job, shorter 30-second videos or podcasts they can listen while they’re at the gym are better ways to reach them than longer blogs.
You know they like Facebook, so you can concentrate your ads and content on that platform. And because clothing is so visual, you want to make sure your website is easy to navigate and has lots of great pictures of your products.
Using The Right Keywords
As part of your target market research, you need to be thinking about the right keywords to use in your campaigns. With your target buyers in mind, think about trending keywords as well as the foundational keywords you need to be using in all the content you create. By using these specific keywords, you greatly improve the chances your ideal buyers will find your content when they’re going on their next shopping spree.
Know Your Competitors
You probably have a good idea of who your local competitors are. Take some time and look at their website, content and social media channels. Where are they posting? What kind of engagement are they getting? What type of campaigns are they running?
You can learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t and use this knowledge to help create your own campaigns. You can also look at other regional companies around the U.S. to get ideas. What are companies in the Midwest or California doing? Often you can get inspiration from seeing how other companies approach their marketing while saving yourself the trial and error!
Experiment, Experiment, Experiment!
Don’t be afraid to test out other channels when marketing your business. For fitness-minded moms, you can get great exposure for your business by sponsoring a local kid-friendly 5k run. Or look at getting a booth at a kids fair where you can display your new clothing. 
You could even sponsor a scholarship. Anything that gets your business in front of your target buyers is a great way to build your brand. Just remember, branding and sales are not the same. Don’t expect 50 leads to roll in just because you sponsored a 5k. If it were that easy… those 24” x 24” sections of marketing real estate on the starting line banner wouldn’t be $100 bucks.
Get The Attention Of Influencers
Another great way to get the attention of your target market is to work with influencers. Every market has a group of people who’ve built a strong following on social media and promote products and services they like. Even just one mention of your product can give your sales a huge boost!
Creating Your Future Target Market
Once you know who you’re currently selling to, you need to figure out your future target market. Who should you be focusing on to grow your business?
For the Philly-based clothing line, their future target market could be getting into a major retailer like Macy’s or Target. Knowing that, you can start creating content that will appeal to a major company and build that future market while your other content can still be serving your current buyers.
Researching these buyers can help you figure out how your company fits into their retail strategy. You can better market your product once you know what they’re looking for, the social media channels they post to and what types of brands they’ve worked with before.
The time you spend identifying and getting to know your target markets pays huge dividends. Once you know who’s buying your products, you can create the right kind of content in the format and channels that your buyers use. With this targeted approach, you can be sure that your marketing will pay off with brand recognition and better revenue.
March 15, 2018
