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Social Marketing: Find your Target Audience

It is a well accepted fact that social media is a great way to promote your business. Numerous businesses have turned to the free media outlet to gain recognition. These businesses share funny stories, cute pictures and create contests for Likes, Tweets and Shares. All of this is great, but who is really getting the message?

Businesses should themselves, “Why is this ‘Like’ important?” In a dream world, every Like/Share/Tweet would potentially be a lead or increase your return of investment. But let’s face it, all of these are only as good as the person who first liked it, shared it or tweeted it. The most important part of your social media strategy is often the most overlooked: you target audience.

Social Marketing Strategy- Your Optimal Target Audience

There are certain questions to answer before presenting your company on a social media network. A company should have a strategic social media strategy before starting new social media network accounts. The strategy should be detailed, thorough and achievable. In developing your social media strategy, a company should have defined an audience they want to receive the message. In social marketing, an in-depth understanding of the personas that make up the audience is essential is developing compelling and relevant content. Each target audience, or persona, has different styles, interests and needs which all needs to be taken into consideration when developing a content strategy.

It is common for the target audience of a company to be developed through three personas.

  1. Personas with a need that the product or service can satisfy
  2. Personas interested in learning about new products and services
  3. Personas with enough money to afford the product or service.

The best way to visualize these audiences is through a Venn diagram. For example, suppose a company sells BPA free water bottles. How would the persona development process be implemented by such a company?

what is important in social marketing

The Venn diagram shows you the optimal target audience is in the middle. This is the primary target audience because they meet all three personas. Your secondary optimal target audience would be anyone who meets two of the personas, such as health-conscience mom’s. Although some people only meet one persona, they are still a target audience and require attention as well.

An advantage of social marketing is that it allows unprecedented adaption of the message depending on the group being targeted. If a persona has a need that the product can satisfy and is interested in learning about it but does not have enough money to afford it, you can target the individual with coupons, promotions and deals to make the product more affordable. A marketing plan can even be “mixed and matched” to fit different personas, making any strategy customizable.

When deciding which part of the target audience to market toward, it is essential to keep the overall marketing and business goals and objectives in mind. A social media marketing plan should be looked at as an important asset to a bigger business plan.

Have you found a social media tactic that works best for your company or product? Let us know!

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