Getting Your Main Message to Your Target Audience

The whole point of any marketing campaign is to reach the right audience with the right message at the right time. In the realm of digital marketing, there is rarely such as a thing as a single, big marketing campaign except perhaps when you are new. After that, one marketing “campaign” just runs into the next, because you are creating and publishing content all the time. If you aren’t doing this, then you are leaving lots of money on the table.

1. What’s the Message?

Among all of the specials, discounts, emails, ads, and new content that you publish with detailed messages, you do have the main message. And before you look at anything else in terms of marketing, you have to identify your main message. That main message is not touting the product or service you are selling. It is instead the benefit and the value of that product or service to your customers. You see, it really is all about them and not you.

So, your first step in this process is to identify what pain points you will relieve and what problem solutions you bring to the table with your product or service. Once you have begun this, then you can begin to look for the people who actually have those pain points and need those solutions.

2. Finding the Audience

Most likely, you have an idea, once you have refined your main message, of who your target audience is. If you are selling deck stain, for example, then your target audience is homeowners, but what kind of homeowners? Probably not elderly homeowners who will hire that kind of work done. Probably not homeowners who own a condo in a high-rise complex in a large urban area. You are looking for the 30-65 age range of homeowners who have single family dwellings in suburban neighborhoods. They tend to have decks, and they also are of an age where they do a lot of home maintenance themselves. If on the other hand, you are a company that builds and maintains decks, your audience will be a bit different. You can add, for example, those suburban homeowners who are elderly.

Anything that you can do to refine the demographic of your target audience will be beneficial. There are free information and data all over the web that will help you do this, and you need to use it.

So, just like that message, you also need to refine your customer persona and then take steps to determine if you reaching that entire audience.

3. Use Analytics to Determine Your Reach

Google Audience and Acquisition Analytics can give you some amazing information about your current customers and visitors. They will tell you the following:

• Who are your visitors? You can get demographic information, including age and gender. So, if you not reaching your entire age category, you can then go back to your site and your content and figure out how you can better expand the age range. Maybe you are only appealing to the younger or only the older bracket.
• Where do your visitors come from? Are you looking to appeal to customers on a national level? Are the majority coming only from Northeastern states? Why is that? Do you need to change your language or your jargon?
• What channels and devices are your visitors using to get to your site? Are they from organic searches, links from your social media pages, ads, or emails? And are they coming from PC’s or mobile devices? If you know that your demographic uses mobile devices a lot and more visitors are coming from PC’s than mobiles, then you are not reaching your full audience. And perhaps you need to assess your mobile strategy and see how it can change to improve visitor experiences on those devices.

If you are not reaching your target audience, what can you do differently? You will probably need to conduct some market research and figure out how and where your target audience wants to receive information and how they want the information packaged. And take some “advice” from your competitors who are successful. Check out their sites, their social media presences and their blog. What are they doing differently?

4. Analyze What Content is the Most Accessed and Shared

This will be an interesting study for you. Again, Google Analytics, as well as a number of other sources, will be able to tell you which content is most visited, which content is keeping visitors engaged, and which outside content is driving traffic to your site.

You will also want to know what content is being shared on social media and where on social media. You can use a social sharing bar that will allow visitors to share but will also track the numbers for you.

Now, how you use this will be important. If, for example, the content that has your main message is not being read and shared, take a look at that message again. On the other hand, if your customer and visitor demographic are not what you want it is probably not the message, but, rather, where and how your message is being published.

5. Be Where Your Customer Is with Your Message in Engaging Formats

There is also plenty of research that will tell you where your audience is – what social media platforms they use and when exactly they are using those platforms. Be there, get personal, and start establishing those relationships that will “lure” your audience to you.

Make sure that main message is couched in really engaging content – have quizzes, contests, survey, polls; produce videos and put visuals everywhere. Craft wonderfully compelling headlines. What type of humor does your audience appreciate? What type of content does this audience share? There are a huge variety of ways to format your main message. Experiment until you find those formats that are being accessed and shared by the largest portions of your audience and then “rinse and repeat.”

If you struggle with creating content, and you are not in a position yet to employ the staff to do this full-time, check out some online writing services. There are now sites that actually provide critical reviews of writing services. Check out a few of these review pages and select a company that has a great reputation for content creation.

Your message and your audience: these are the factors in business success. The rest, as they say, are the details.