When it comes to digital marketing, having catch-all content isn’t good enough. For your campaign to be effective, you’ll need to have a clear idea of the audience you’re targeting. Your audience members need to feel like your content is directly addressing them, and you can’t do this if you’re trying to talk to everyone at the same time!
Before you pick up the pen or start tapping away at your keyboard, you need to answer a few important questions about your audience:
- How old is your typical target customer?
- Exactly where do they live?
- What do they want?
- What excites them?
- What bores them?
Discover the answers to these questions, and you’ll have the power to captivate your audience with precise, engaging content.
In today’s article, we will take a look at tailoring your content to a specific audience. Let’s take a home improvement company as an example and examine the best way to define the target audience.
Is your content B2B or B2C?
Finding out whether your audience is a business or a single consumer is a fundamental step when it comes to shaping your content strategy. B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) will require a completely different approach, so you’ll need to get a clear idea of who you’re targeting.
The advantage of B2C content over B2B content is that, with B2C, you can create a detailed profile of a single consumer. Targeting a business, where there are many individuals, can be more complicated.
So, with a home improvement company, we know that the vast majority of the target audience will be consumers – people looking to renovate their home. So content will be B2C.
Create your typical customer profile
As we mentioned in the intro, finding out as much about your audience as possible is key. From the average age and gender to their location and wage bracket, knowing your customers will be crucial, if you’re to create content with which they connect.
You don’t want to narrow your audience too much. If your home improvement company finds that its audience is predominantly middle-class men, tailoring your content to that audience is a sensible approach; however, writing exclusively for them will exclude everyone else and be detrimental to your business, so balance is key.
Get feedback
Feedback can be brutal. But let’s face it, living in a business bubble can be fatal, so it’s massively important to find out what’s working and what’s not directly from your customers.
If you’ve already some data on your customer base, like a mailing list, you can find out a little bit more about what they want by asking questions. Also, having an intuitive, easy to use online form on your website can be a good way of getting to know your customers, enabling you to structure your campaign.
Analyse data
Pretty much the most efficient way to find out what’s working and what’s not is by using data. Increasingly important in digital marketing, as well as every other sector, data can you so much about your target audience.
Use Google Analytics to tell you what type of content is most popular. Using click rates, conversion rates, number of hits and the like, you’ll be able to sort the digital wheat from the chaff and drill down on your target audience.
One could argue that a large part of a home renovation company’s audience is older people, who aren’t computer literate and aren’t online. While this fact is worth keeping in mind, it may have been more relevant ten years ago, but the reality is that nowadays, even the older generations are online. Which means your digital marketing strategy is all the more important.
New vs existing customers
Brand awareness plays a huge part when it comes to creating content for your audience. It’s crucial to consider whether you’re aiming your arrow at an audience of existing customers or potential new ones.
Existing customers will have a familiarity with your brand, so your content will need to keep them engaged with your company. Content should be forward moving, looking at progress and exciting changes. For a home improvement company, this could be an innovative new range of products, for example.
In order to catch the attention of new customers, your content needs to sell your brand story. It needs to captivate but also to inform, as potential customers are in the learning process. So, for a home renovations company, advice on the best types of renovations for a home, and important points to consider before making a big decision, would be appropriate.
Consistency is key
While it’s important to have a degree of flexibility with your content marketing strategy, having a consistent tone throughout is fundamental to your business. Understand your customer base, adapt your content according to the time of year and the ebb and flow of your business, but make sure that you have a clear, consistent brand story. A muddled up message will confuse your customers. A clear, concise message will capture their imagination and bind a relationship for years to come.