Marketing plays an increasingly important role in connecting with customers. Obviously, if you’re going to spend the time and money on marketing, you’re going to want to see results. The best way to get those results is by identifying your target audience – and then marketing to them.

It’s easy to think that you would be better off casting a wide net to expose your brand or product to a maximum number of potential customers. In reality, it wastes time and money. It’s foolish to market to, say, 20 thousand people to get 1 thousand customers when you can identify who those customers are likely going to be, and market only to them.

Through identifying your target audience, you learn who the people that will likely buy your product or service are. By doing this, you will achieve two goals:

• You will rid yourself of incorrect assumptions about your target audience. You may assume the people who are interested in your product are similar to you, or perhaps you have tried to guess who will be interested. Only with data, though, will you actually have an accurate understanding of who your target audience is.

• You can more effectively market your product. Once you know who you’re marketing to, then you can begin to gain insights into their preferences and problems. With this information, you can tailor your marketing to best appeal to them.

With these two goals achieved, marketing becomes more effective. Instead of just getting attention, you are resonating with people who are likely going to give you business. With more effective and efficient marketing, the potential for revenue will inevitably increase.

Data can help identify who will most likely be interested in your product or service, but that is only one part of the equation. To turn knowledge about your target audience into actionable information, you should use your data to learn more than just who they are. Keep these three dimensions in mind:

• The problems they have that your business can solve
  If you can get an idea of what problems they have, you can create marketing that offers your product or service as a solution.

• The content they consume
  This information is not just used to put your marketing next to the content they are consuming, it also can inform the marketing itself. Use this knowledge to curate your marketing to align with the themes and subjects of the content your target audience enjoys.

• Where do they like to go?
  This goes for both online and offline spaces. With an idea of where your audience likes to go, you can populate those spaces with your marketing.

You might be saying, well this is all well and good, but how do I go about identifying who these people in my target audience are? Here are some strategies businesses use to identify their target audience, and gain insights about them:

• Surveying their current customers
• Interviewing current customers in depth
• Checking Google Analytics data
• Using audience data from social media
• Analyzing data you already have (customer purchase history, customer emails, etc.)

The best way to identify your target audience is to employ all of these strategies, and more. Of course, this is a time consuming process. If the benefits of marketing to your target audience appeal to you, but the process of doing so seems daunting – or if you simply do not have the time, Pathfinder can help. Reach out to our team today and let us introduce your brand to your target audience!