The first step to developing any type of marketing strategy for your business is to find your target audience. Your target audience is the group or groups of people that you want your marketing efforts to be directed to. Examples of marketing efforts include social media campaigns, paid advertisements, or email marketing campaigns.

Marketing strategies that are customized to your target audience tend to be more successful than any other broad marketing strategy. Why is this? Because customers, whether they are buying a product or service, like to feel as if they matter. They enjoy the special personalized touches in the marketing like including their name, location, their interests, or occupations.

So, how do you find out who your target audience is?

You want to find out what types of people will buy your product or service, right? Who better to ask than the people already buying from you? Take a customer out for a cup of coffee and take the time to get to know them and ask them questions. You could also get together some of your current customers for a focus group or send out an email survey to them. Here are some examples of questions to ask them.

• How did they find your company?
• What made them choose you?
• What do they like about your marketing strategy?
• What do they not like about your marketing strategy?

Before moving forward with a marketing strategy, it’s important to analyze the customer base you already have. When analyzing your current customer base and working to develop a target audience, it’s important to use key demographics. Once those demographics are narrowed down, it will be easier to tailor your marketing to each person in your audience or audience segment. Here are some demographics that we recommend taking note of.

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Occupation
• Marital Status
• Hobbies/Interests
• Buying Habits
• Income
• Personality Types
• Customer Pain Points

When developing a marketing strategy, it is also important to look at the competitor’s customer base. Who is your competitor targeting and how are they doing it? This is a great way to find any missing gaps in your target audience. You may find a type of customer that does not fit into one of your existing audience segments. One of the ways you can evaluate your competition is by looking at their reviews and social media. Who is following and interacting with them on their accounts? Who is leaving reviews about their product or service and is it positive or negative?

As you grow your business, the best way to continuously define your target market is to communicate with them. Use your website, reviews, GoogleMyBusiness page, and social media accounts to interact with current and potential customers. This includes responding to comments and messages, liking posts, and generating interactive content on social media to prompt them to interact. Interactive content can be a creative way of gathering valuable information from current or prospective clients. Here are some of our suggestions for interactive content!

• A post that prompts directly
  • What is your favorite season?
  • Tell us your favorite color
  • Post a picture of your dog
• Contests
• Use of hashtags
• Polls
• Quizzes