Have you ever been telling a story, only to realize that the people around you have either stopped listening, or talked over you? Yeah, that’s not your ideal audience. Similarly, it feels like wasted time and energy to be placing content in front of people who aren’t interested, or aren’t relevant to your business. Today we’re giving you our top 4 ways to find your ideal audience in the digital space. Whether you’re working with an ad budget, or wanting to tackle this with no money spent, we’ve got steps to help you understand your audience, and to evolve your audience into its ideal state.
Tip 1: A/B Test Ad Audiences
If you’re utilizing an advertising budget, and you have experience with running ads on social platforms, run audience tests to determine who is most receptive to your ads. Whether you’re launching a new product, or you just want to improve your ad results, creating multiple audiences to run A/B tests can help eliminate wasted ad dollars and provide insights on your clientele.
When determining your different audience segments, keep your variable changes small so you’re able to see the key differences in results. Change things like location, age, or interest targeting to see how many people are available to reach based on your budget. Also, explore different creative ideas for your ads through changing text, visual media, and more.
Tip 2: Explore your Google Analytics and Social Analytics
If you aren’t ready to dive into advertising, that’s okay! The ability to curate your ideal audience doesn’t have to be limited to advertising audiences. The beauty of the digital space is how robust analytics are – with the touch of a button we can get information on the age range, location, and interaction level of our audiences. Google Analytics shows us what areas of websites are most active, how long people spend on a website, and how links perform.
As a video production and marketing agency, we rely heavily on this information and encourage our clients to do so as well. Our digital marketing team reviews results monthly, and works with clients to improve bounce rates, page views, and help generate a clearer understanding of audiences for long term marketing plans. But what if you want to go beyond Google? Try social media insights!
As social platforms continue to grow and evolve, so will your own results. Reviewing your analytics on social media really allows you to dig deep into the community you’re working to build. Where are they focusing their attention on your website? Are they primarily on Facebook? Is your following a young crowd, or are you hitting a mature generation with your posts? Learning more about your current audience can help you determine your current success at reaching your ideal audience. Furthermore, it may provide the “next steps” for reaching that ideal audience.
Tip 3: Brand Kit/Guidelines
Going back to the foundation of your brand can help determine ideal audiences. Start by looking at your mission as a company – what is your organization’s purpose? This question allows you to start molding your “ideal customer” into your brand guidelines. Create a profile by exploring questions like:
- What problems or obstacles does my ideal client face?
- How do I solve this problem?
- What does my ideal client like to do? How old are they?
- What are their interests? What are their pain points?
Once you’ve determined who your ideal client is, start thinking about where they are located in the digital universe. If your services are career related, like a managerial coach, make yourself known on LinkedIn and Twitter. If your products are a part of a brick-and-mortar store, create a storefront on Instagram and run ads on Facebook.
At Oswego Creative, our marketing experts can help you determine this information, and we utilize brand kits internally. Having a clear understanding of the foundation of our own business, along with our clients, allows us to deliver the highest quality content to the ideal audience.
Tip 4: Ask Directly
Take the opportunity to combine engagement growth and audience research through interacting with your current audience. There are so many ways to reach out to ask your current audience questions. You could create polls on Instagram, email a client survey, or post a video on LinkedIn asking for responses. This also gives you the opportunity to see who already fits into your ideal audience. For example, if you’re a Real Estate Agent utilizing Instagram, running a poll to see how many people are looking to sell their home versus looking to buy a home is a great way to determine what service is in high demand at the moment. At Oswego Creative, we decided to see how many of our followers were business owners and how many were videographers through a poll on Instagram, and the results helped us understand who currently views our content.
Getting to know your audience is a collective effort across multiple platforms, analytics avenues, and different internal departments. Being able to place value on your content in relation to viewers is key to long term success, and Oswego Creative is equipped to help you take these steps 10 times further. Whether you’re tackling this task solo, or working with one of our marketing specialists, you’re bound to see your audience grow, engage more often, and evolve as time goes on. Happy marketing!