Profile your target audience

Whether you’re selling a product or service, as a new or existing business perhaps looking to diversify or rebrand, you need to profile your specific target audience. Building a detailed customer profile will help you identify the best methods to target that group of people, (e.g. if your ideal customer is a fashion conscious Gen Z female, putting together a social media strategy would be the perfect way to reach her).

The best way to pinpoint your consumer market is to identify the following:

• Demographics (age, gender income)
• Psychographics (values, interests, lifestyle)
• Geographics (local, national, global)

Starting with the basic demographics, are they male or female? What age bracket do they fall into and how much does this consumer earn (e.g. as a luxury brand you wouldn't target a younger individual on minimum wage). Diving a little deeper into the psychographics, do they have hobbies and interests? An athletics brand would want to target those who already have an existing interest in fitness. Building out a general lifestyle of this consumer, where do they eat, shop, holiday, how do they spend their money (in-store or online?). Lastly and probably the most important, geography, where is your target market based? A local boutique would likely target those in their surrounding areas vs an online retailer would perhaps have a more global consumer base.

The goal is to identify exactly who your customer is, then tailor your outward messaging across all platforms to that specific group of people.

Run targeted social media ads

Social media advertising is a great way to reach your specific audiences on different platforms informed through your pre-identified consumer profile. This will help your brand find its way into the feed of your prospective customers, placing you on their radar.

But… being strategic in this method is key. Ensuring you’re targeting on the correct platforms, at the best frequency along with choosing right content is how you turn ad spend into sales.

For example if you’re a newly launched protein brand, social media ads will allow you to target an individual who is health conscious, interested in fitness, of a particular age or gender in a specific location. Alongside a 360° visual alignment on the brands side from website, content and copy which is designed to attract that individual, might potentially make them stop scrolling and take a look. The more in-depth you can get with your targeting, the more likely you will attract your ideal customer.

Retarget people who were interested (with social ads)
This is a method of targeting which is commonly overlooked, especially by new businesses. With a focus on always finding ‘new’ customers, many brands will forget about their existing customers, those who may have already purchased your product or service in the past, commented on your posts or perhaps have looked on your website. Retargeting those who have shown interest already in the past, is a very effective way to achieve more customers in 2020.

Why? Remembering the rule of 7, the average number of impressions a brand must make on their target market in order to achieve a sale… You already know this individual is interested in your brand, it’s about subtly targeting again, placing your brand in the back of their mind for the next time they are looking to purchase that specific product or service.

Retargeting is a very effective method of finding new customers, one which Genflow uses regularly, and how we manage to achieve such incredible results across our clients' brands.

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