What’s in this article:
- Tips to help you gain enough insights to craft engaging promotional strategies for each audience
What’s the biggest red flag that your marketing initiative will go poorly? When someone on the team says, “Our brand/product is for everyone.” It’s like arguing one size of clothing fits everyone — it’s laughably untrue. What’s more, targeting every possible customer is impractical to the point of harming your brand. Instead, effective marketing requires a target audience to focus your messaging on specific values and consumer needs.
Of course, defining your audience might be easier said than done. Social media and modern e-commerce are fracturing once-monolithic markets into niche audiences with highly specialized wants and needs. However, with a bit of effort, marketers can still find high-value segments receptive to what their brand offers.
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Aggregate and segment your customer data
As always, the easiest way to gain audience insights is to extract them directly from your own sales data. Begin by segmenting customers to see what trends emerge between the various parameters. Some standard metrics include:
- Age: Millennials, Gen Z, Gen X, Boomers — all have different behaviors and needs that inform how they interact with your products and ad campaigns.
- Location: Knowing where customers are located makes it easier to design personalized ad creative and messaging.
- Spending habits: Customers who make the occasional large purchase or a dozen small transactions can both be high-value customers, but they are unlikely to respond to similar promotions.
- Language: Never assume your customers speak the most common language within a given location. Recent immigrants, for example, might be receptive to advertisements in their native language.
- Interests: Knowing what kinds of interests and hobbies your customers enjoy can give you insight into their shopping habits.
- Life stage: When parents shop for clothing, they’re not just shopping for themselves; they’re also thinking of their children. Knowing whether your customers are single, married, have children — or even if they prefer pets over children — can be valuable for crafting personalized promotions.
Learn more about who follows your brand
In 2021, your audience isn’t just your customers — it can also be people who enjoy or follow your brand but only purchase products periodically. This step is essential if you have a retail presence that won’t show up clearly in your first-party sales data. Thankfully, there are still ways to gain insights about these audiences:
- Dig into Google Analytics: Google offers a wealth of information about people who search for your website, whether they ultimately buy a product or not. Use Google Analytics for access to the metrics mentioned above. Also, look into helpful search terms that can help you optimize SEO rankings.
- Analyze your social media followers: Social media channels are beneficial for brands because they let you communicate with fans and gain insights about potential customers. Built-in analytics tools such as Facebook Insights can surface valuable insights about your followers and which types of content are popular.
Find out who likes your competition
If you want to learn more about your audience and acquire more customers, sometimes the best place to look is the competition. By analyzing the competitor’s social media profiles, you’ll often find audience insights that overlap with your own. The same goes for any Google-ranking web pages and SEO search terms. Be sure to consider what market needs they’re addressing and any gaps in their offerings that your brand might be able to fill.
Marketing techniques are only successful when you know precisely which segment to target. By following these tips, you’ll gain enough insights to craft engaging promotional strategies for each audience.