Understanding Your Audience | 3 Things to Remember

by Jace Vernon | Jun 18, 2013 | Creative Marketing, Customer Service, Marketing, Video Marketing, video online marketing, website design

Understanding Your Audience | 3 things to remember when getting to know your consumers.

Getting the most out of your video marketing campaign can be as simple as understanding your audience. Maybe it doesn’t actually sound so simple – and here’s the thing – it’s not. If you want to broaden your marketing horizons you must use social media. Social media has become so much more than just glorified chat rooms and photo boards. Sites like Facebook have become a community in and of itself where people interact, make new friends, create their own awareness campaigns, and much more. And even if you’re on board with social media for your business, creating a website, Facebook, and Twitter pages will not ensure that people will come to you. You need to act and interact, post often and respond to your follower’s questions and comments. Get your business out there! Developing a solid marketing strategy to use with social media will allow you to reap the maximum benefits from your efforts.

But to do that you have to know a few things: Who exactly are you trying to reach? Who is your target audience? What appeals to them? Trying to understand who your audience is can be daunting, but here are a few key ways to get to know the people who will be buying your product:

1. Research

This is perhaps the most important and direct way to get to know your audience. Input gathered from real live people can help to design your marketing campaigns to be the most effective. A few ways to gather information from your audience includes:

–          Conduct surveys and/or take polls throughout your current following to find out what they like, don’t like, how they watch online video, what they feel they would add, and what is important to them. Asking questions is the easiest and sometimes most efficient way to interact with your visitors.

–          Using web analytics is another popular way for businesses to see what kinds of people are visiting their site. Google Analytics is the preferred analytical tool – easy set up and completely free!

–          There are sites such as Rapleaf that makes sure everyone using the internet has a great experience. To use these sites, a business sends a list of all user emails. The site then searches its database for those specific email addresses and provides you with information about the person using that email address, such as age, gender and location.

2. Know the Social Media Types

There are three distinct categories of consumers who spend their time online. First, there is the silent majority. These are the observers, they don’t usually post often, share often, or respond often. It may seem fruitless to chase after this group, but they are the largest group and are always watching. Second is the vocal minority. These are the people who share posts, videos, links, etc… They are always commenting on things others have shared and are anxiously interacting with others. These are the consumers who will spread the word about your business to their silent majority friends. Cater to them. The third and smallest group is the social authorities. These are the trailblazers – the ones with great online influence who have successful blogs or sites of their own. If you can get in good with these guys, you’re about set.

3. Ask Questions

Conducting surveys is an excellent way to gather information, but if you really want to go deep, you need to do a little digging yourself. There are three specific questions you should always ask when trying to get to know your audience:

–          What are the customer’s preferences for content?

–          How do they discover, consume and share content?

–          What do they talk about on social media sites?

Once you have in mind who your target audience is, there are a few things you should do to keep them coming back. These include tailoring your future marketing campaigns to appeal to them. Make sure the aesthetics of your site, images and videos appeal to them. For example, if your business is trying to appeal to an older generation, use mostly muted colors, a clean design, conservative graphics and a classic font. If you’re marketing toward teens or young adults, use eye-catching graphics, creative design features and bold, popping colors.

Remember, social media and your audience’s behavior is always changing. Stay on top of any changes by pursuing an active role across all the social media platforms. Be a part of the action; listen to what your audience wants. Do what you can to make sure your business will never be left behind.

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See a related post HERE.

+Jessica Anderson