Digital Marketing 101: Understanding and Growing Your Audience with 2 Simple Tactics

One of the most basic building blocks of digital marketing is knowing your audience — and, of course, understanding how to apply that knowledge in an effective way so you can continue to grow said audience. 

Having a solid grasp of whom you are selling your products and services to can give you a huge advantage when it comes to insights — and audience targeting isn’t going away anytime soon. According to HubSpot, it’s still one of the primary ways that advertisers drive demand. 

Once you have targeting in mind, a brand’s success starts making much more sense. For example, over the course of COVID, the amount of time people spend watching videos compared to other types of content has skyrocketed. In addition to the state of the world, the recent social media fads heavily favor videos. If you take a look at the content you’ve posted over this past year, you’ll likely see you received more engagement when you posted videos as opposed to still shots — and that’s just one example of the awesome information you can find when you take a look at your audience.

With this in mind, it’s appropriate that Tiktok and Instagram were among the most downloaded apps over this past year. The success of mega brands like these relies considerably on those in power taking what they know about their audience, learning what they can from the facts and figures, and applying it to their marketing strategies so they can continue to reach more users. 

For example, Instagram recently introduced Instagram Reels, an area of their application that’s solely geared towards video content. The reason they did this? Probably just to compete with TikTok, but also because they likely saw how much more engagement their users were giving to video within their platform.

Whatever their reasoning, let’s do a deep dive on the importance of understanding your target audience and preview a couple of tactics that take full advantage of audience research so you can experience that very same success.

The Two Types of Target Audiences

In order to fully understand the strategies you can use to grow your business, it’s vital to know what exactly the “audience” is and how it’s categorized. 

Essentially, there are two different categories of audiences. 

First, we have the primary audience, or the group of consumers that are directly receiving your marketing messages. They are also the ones who decide whether or not they need your product. 

The second group, surprisingly enough, is called the secondary audience. Now, this group is the consumers who are outside of your primary audience but still can be reached with the tactics employed for the primary audience. 

Oftentimes, the members of this group are considered secondary because the group itself is too small, your product doesn’t fulfill enough of their wants and needs, or they do not have the funds required to buy it. Whatever the case, one of the most important parts about them is that they have a certain amount of sway with members of the primary audience.

Just think of it like this: An ad for a new toy coming out may seem like it is targeting children, but it is actually the parents who are in the primary audience. As the secondary audience, the children have considerable influence over the parent’s decision to purchase the new toy.

So for best results, pay close attention to both primary and secondary audiences.

Tactic No. 1: Create a Buyer Profile

Now that you understand the different types of audiences out there, we’re going to cover some possible tactics that will supplement their growth. It’s important to note that there have been dozens of strategies developed over the years, and the ones we’ll mention in the remainder of this blog will only scratch the surface of possibility. 

Regardless, one of the most reliable and common approaches to utilizing audience research is creating a buyer profile. This consists of drawing up a character or persona based on what you know about your ideal target customer. Age, gender, area of residency, and all those other demographics are great to incorporate, but what makes this even more powerful is when you take the time to figure out information about their desires, their fears, their needs, and things like that.

Being able to answer questions like “How can we help our consumer reach their goal?” and “What is a common problem they face?” can be huge insights in and of themselves. Through the use of complex research statistics, simple competitor analysis, and an endless box of marketing tools, you can put together an effective and lucrative buyer profile.

This is more than just looking at the interests of your audience. Profiling involves looking at geographical similarities between consumers, analyzing pain points, and taking note of goals and problems. It’s crucial that the buyer profile does more than just answer the question of “What does my audience want?” It’s just as important that you know WHY they are behaving in a certain manner. 

Additionally, having an intimate understanding of your audience can help you tailor your content to these groups, ensuring that they receive your message and actually absorb it.

Here’s a couple more resources for creating a buyer persona if you’re in need of a little helping hand:

Tactic No. 2: Omnichannel Marketing

The next tactic we’ll be going over is a bit more complex. It’s called omnichannel marketing, and it’s basically just a fancy word for unifying all of your channels under the same central themes, including brand voice, messaging, design, and more. 

Creating a cohesive marketing strategy ensures that potential members of your audience will receive the exact message you want to put out, regardless of which social media platform they decide to sink hours of their day into. It also gives people who miss your ad the first time around an additional chance to get involved with what you have to offer. 

Studies show that campaigns that cover three or more channels have a 90 percent higher retention rate than campaigns that rely on a single platform for marketing — so not only are you reaching more people but you’re also making sure they hear, understand, and remember you.

Omnichannel marketing becomes even stronger when you’ve taken the time to flesh out a solid buyer profile. Your content will not only be consistent across several platforms but it will also be in all the right places for appealing to your target audience. The right content placed in the right regions is a surefire way to maximize the size of your audience. 

For best results, just make sure you cater your messaging to each platform’s best practices — so write shorter, snappier captions on Twitter, include a branded graphic or photo on Instagram, and all those other wonderful tools of the trade.

Moving Forward

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog! We hope these tips and tactics help you formulate an effective strategy for your business. 

Whatever route you decide to take with your marketing, the combination of buyer profiles and omnichannel marketing will be the essential building blocks of your strategy. And if you need help with any aspect of your marketing plan, our eager team of skilled creatives here at OpticTour are ready and willing to lend you a hand!

Whenever you’re ready, you can schedule a time to talk to us by filling out this contact form.

 

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