Introduction
We all know that it is important to have a clear understanding of who we are targeting with our brand messaging. We need to ensure that we are speaking in their language, addressing their needs, and getting our message out in places they frequent. But how do you get all the information you need to really reach your target audience?
Know your audience
A key part of any marketing strategy is knowing your target audience. It sounds simple, but people often forget to consider this important aspect when it comes to their campaigns.
First step: know who you’re trying to reach and why. Consider the needs of your target market, the pain points they experience, and what motivates them to buy from you in the first place. Understand their demographics (age, gender), psychographics (personality traits) and buying behaviours (how they make purchasing decisions). Having a clear picture of who makes up your ideal customer base will help you create relevant messaging that resonates with them more effectively than if you were just throwing darts at a wall without any insight into who they are as individuals.
Segment your audience
Segmentation is a powerful tool for marketing, but it can be difficult to implement. Your company may have an existing audience that they want to target, but understanding what they want and how best to reach them takes time. This is where segmentation comes in: by breaking down your target market into smaller groups of people who share similar characteristics, you can better understand and appeal to each group individually. This will help with everything from improving your marketing efforts (by understanding what customers want) to increasing sales (by getting in touch with more potential clients).
Give your customers content they want
You might have a good idea of who your target audience is, but it’s important to remember that each person within the audience has different needs and expectations. What you find interesting, they may not. Therefore, if you want to reach your ideal customers with your content strategy, think about what type of information would be useful for them based on their role in the company or industry and how much time they spend online.
Create compelling, personalized subject lines that resonate with your audience.
Your subject line is one of the most important elements of your email campaign. It’s what draws people to open it, so make sure it’s compelling and relevant to your audience.
- Make sure it’s personalized. A subject line like “New product announcement” isn’t personal enough; try something like “You’ll love our new product announcement.” Or “Jane, you’ll love product name”
- Make sure it’s clear and easy to understand. If you’re writing an email about a sale on floral arrangements for weddings, don’t use a long, complicated title like “Floral arrangements for weddings are on sale now!” instead go with something short like: “Save 40% on flowers at the wedding store this weekend!”
- Don’t use too many words in your subject line — four or five words will usually suffice (and remember that three words can work just as well as four). This is especially true if you have room restrictions in Gmail or Outlook, but even if you don’t have such limits this practice will ensure that readers see what they need right away without having to scroll down into a list of unread emails (which could be quite long).
You’re sending emails to reach people, so make sure you’re speaking directly to them and giving them what they want.
You’re sending emails to reach people, so make sure you’re speaking directly to them and giving them what they want.
- Speak in a way that is relevant to them. If you are talking about your latest product or service, focus on how it solves one of their problems or creates an opportunity for them.
- Give them what they need. If you’ve got a free offer, make sure it’s relevant and useful for your target audience!
- Give them a reason to read the email (and open it). Tell your readers why the content will be valuable for them specifically—if it’s news about the latest industry trends affecting their industry, then tell us why this matters for their industry. Mentioning specific names makes readers feel like they’re being included as part of an exclusive group—this can be especially effective when marketing toward small groups with tight-knit communities where everyone knows everyone else already!
Automate your email workflow with marketing automation.
Automation helps you save time and money, stay organized, and become more efficient and productive.
A marketing automation tool is a software solution that helps marketers streamline their email workflow by automating repetitive tasks like sending out newsletters, collecting subscriptions and segmenting audiences. With automation software you can:
- Create automated workflows to complete repetitive tasks
- Send targeted emails based on content preferences or actions taken by the person viewing your website (e.g., signing up for a webinar)
- Create email campaigns based on the specific needs of your customers
Always test different subject lines, copy and layout types.
Here are some of the types of tests you can try:
- Subject line variations. Try different subject lines, including different words and numbers in your calls to action. For example, one email might say “Get Your Free Guide” and another says “Download Our New Guide”—which do you think is more compelling? Or perhaps you could try shortening or lengthening the subject line a bit to see if that makes a difference in open rates.
- Copy variations. You can also test different copy formats (for example, bullets versus paragraphs), as well as sentence structure within your email body text and call to action button text. The goal here is to find out what works best for your audience; this may be an area where A/B testing will help give you answers quickly so that you can optimize right away!
Think beyond just email
Your audience don’t just live in emails, consider how else you could connect with them. You have many different digital channels to consider, but building a connection digitally is challenging. Could you get a coffee with them, send them a letter, park your branded vehicle in their car park…
A hybrid approach of both Digital and Physical will create a better connection and has far higher conversion rates.
Celebrate the small wins
- Celebrate the small wins. As you start to see positive results, celebrate them! Every win is a step forward, and it’s important not to lose sight of this.
- Recognize that you are on the right track. If you’re new at something, accept that it will take time and practice before you feel confident in your ability to do it well—and even then, there will always be room for improvement!
- Keep going with what’s working (or try something else). If an element of your campaign isn’t achieving its goals, don’t get discouraged—just adjust accordingly! Remember: One person’s failure is another person’s learning experience; they may have been able to learn something from their attempt which will make future attempts more successful. Or maybe they got good feedback from friends/family/colleagues on how things could be improved next time around…
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many ways to reach your target audience. We’ve just covered a few of the basics here, but the possibilities are truly endless. The important thing is to remember that your audience isn’t always going to be one particular group of people. In order to reach them as effectively as possible, you need to do some research about who they are and what kind of things might interest them—and then tailor your content accordingly.