Marketing is continuously shifting and evolving; and in the past decade, marketing has significantly shifted toward the digital landscape. One of the most important things for a successful marketing experience today is knowing your target audience in digital marketing. 

Digital Marketing:

Digital marketing offers businesses more ways to target unique and specific audiences and demographics than traditional media. 

While traditional methods focus on reaching broad audiences and large volumes of people, digital marketing is able to be much more refined to target a specific audience that is interested in and searching for your product/service.

Since moving from traditional to digital marketing, brands are able to target consumers on a multitude of levels, from the basics which are: age, location, job and education level. To lifestyle segmentation which are: preferences, hobbies, wants, needs, likes and dislikes. 

Overall, digital marketing changed the game and gave businesses an easier and faster way to reach a specific audience on a digital platform. 

Why is it important to know who your Target Audience is?

Targeted marketing develops an understanding of a consumer’s behavior. And knowing and understanding your target audience is one of the most important things when it comes to marketing and digital marketing. 

Knowing who your target audience is, will guide your campaigns specifically to people who are interested or potentially interested in the products or services offered by your company. And understanding the interests and behavior of customers and potential customers will allow your business to better target them.

The more accurate a target audience is, the better your company can advertise and market to this population which can help you experience more conversions. 

That’s why it’s so important to know how to find your target audience, otherwise you'll just be wasting time, resources and money by targeting everyone.  

Defining your Target Audience:

A business must first understand what a target audience is before it can determine its own target audience. 

A target audience is a business’s end consumer—whoever is interested in a company’s products or services. 

Things like: Demographics, interests, lifecycles and even geolocations define the target audience. 

In a nutshell, these are the individuals with the highest chance for conversion. 

In order for businesses to improve customer lifetime value and conversion rates, they need to be able to define and target specific audiences so they know where to concentrate their sales and marketing efforts. 

This process will involve some guesswork, but for the most part it's based on the analysis of several specific factors that inform which audience is the best fit. Those factors include:

Audience demographics: 

Characteristics such as gender and age often play a key role in determining the likelihood of a prospect to make a purchase.

Audience income: 

Income can be an important qualifier for conversion. If you’re a B2B (Business to Business) marketer, assessing your audience’s average income means determining how much revenue a company generates and whether it aligns with what you are selling. 

For B2C (Business to Consumer) marketers, you can use income-based audience targeting which focuses on individual and household income data.

Audience location: 

Some prospects may never make a purchase from you simply because you are too far away to serve their area. That's why it's important to establish your marketing audience based on geographic location when working with online marketing channels. 

Audience psychographics: 

Psychographics refer to characteristics of studying consumers based on psychological characteristics (understanding the consumer's emotions and values) and traits such as: values, desires, goals, interests, and lifestyle choices. By understanding this, you can market more accurately.

What else should you research?

You can also use the following questions to further help you define and research your target audience(s):

• --Which social media sites does your target audience use the most?
• --What type of audience follows my competitors?
• --What posts topics do my competitors follow and react to the most?
• --What issues are solved by your products or services that your target audience can rely on?

Knowing Your Target Audience on Different Platforms

Every digital platform has different uses, audiences, and purposes and therefore must receive unique marketing materials and processes. 

That’s why understanding a target audience in terms of specific platforms is essential because there are countless platforms to reach consumers in the digital sphere. 

• SEO (Search engine optimization) can target someone who is actively looking for something specific. 

• Social media is more apt to develop brand awareness and gather information on how consumers operate to retarget them more accurately. 

• Email marketing provides several ways to segment your audience to build an even better understanding.

With lots of platforms available, it’s crucial to choose the right ones for your specific audience. 

Once you've done that, next is developing a marketing plan so you can target and convert each customer better.

Facebook, Instagram, and Other Social Media Sites

Each social site appeals to a different demographic. 

Social media sites such as Facebook and Pinterest are all highly unique platforms. Each uses a unique algorithm to adjust and track impressions, engagement, and conversions. 

The Facebook umbrella contains popular subsites such as Instagram and Marketplace. These all work together with an algorithm that identifies when, where, and to whom to deliver a company’s ads across all the smaller platforms under the umbrella.

Companies should fully understand how social media campaigns impact their business before selecting which social sites to market in and which to invest ad spend in. 

For younger demographics, sites such as TikTok and Snapchat may be the most direct routes. In comparison, older demographics are better accessible on Facebook. 

Overall, the Facebook umbrella has the most extensive reach of all ages.

Google and Other Search Engines

Most people use Google or other search engines daily. 

Understanding how search engines work is essential to fully utilizing all the features and opportunities available to your business. 

There are multiple ways to market your target audience on these search engines. There’s search engine optimization (SEO), which relies on your website, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which is ad spend. 

Search engine optimization improves the organic search rankings of a business’s website through keywords, content, and development. It’s also extremely useful in reaching people with high conversion potential.

Pay-per-click advertising on search engines increases the number of people who click into a website. These clicks have high conversion potential. 

Knowing how PPC campaigns work and successfully utilizing the many tools involved are key to seeing a great ROI with PPC.

Methods of Identifying the Target Market

As we mentioned above, the target market is the first step to developing an in-depth working knowledge of it. And there’s actually several different methods to help you accurately identify your target market for your business. One method is:

Tracking

Tracking is essential to understanding who the target market consists of. A business can determine this by sending people surveys and questionnaires. These surveys should be quick and straightforward. People have the tendency to lose interest quickly, so keeping it just a few questions is ideal. 

The next method to help accurately identify the target market for a business is by using:

Analytics Tools

Using the different tools available on a marketing platform is another recommended way to identify a target audience. A great platform is Google Analytics. 

Google Analytics provides website owners with real-time data on keyword rankings, results, site speeds, retargeting data, and more. That’s why investing in a platform such as Google Ads or other search engine ads comes with the benefit of highly customized analytical data. This investment helps a business better analyze who they’re reaching and those customers’ lifetime values.

Challenges in Target Audience Identification

There’s plenty of challenges when it comes to identifying target audiences, regardless of the platform used. A business owner can field and manage these challenges, but it may be difficult and time-consuming to stay on top of that’s why hiring a professional digital marketing agency can be very cost effective and useful.

Inaccurate Data

Some analytical tools simply aren’t as advanced at data collection as others. Avoid using unknown metrics or relying on just one platform for all your data. This can lead to campaigns that are based on inaccurate or outdated data. 

Shared Devices

Shared devices are another challenge when it comes to tracking and identifying target markets. 

When people share devices, it can throw off tracking. A good example of this is a family that is sharing one tablet. The data only knows this tablet as one user, but a parent and a few kids of differing ages could be using it at different times as well. 

This can get interests crossed and develop an inaccurate view of who this audience truly is. A young child may spend a lot of tablet time watching children’s videos and playing games, but a parent may be using it for work and research, thus creating a view of a tablet user that confuses most established algorithms.

A business can avoid this issue by not relying entirely on data. A well-versed professional in digital marketing knows how important it is to understand that as accurate as data can be, common sense and human scope are essential to interpreting it. 

Marketing decisions should be made by experienced people and informed by data rather than informed by data alone.

How a Digital Marketing Agency Helps with Target Audience Identification

A well-rounded digital marketing agency that takes a full-funnel approach can be invaluable to target audience identification. 

Agencies like ModFXMedia, can dedicate ample time and resources to fully understanding the needs, wants, and patterns of the real target audience for specific products and services of a particular company. 

Below are just a few of the advantages of working with professionals for target audience identification and campaign planning.

Constant Testing

One of the major setbacks of trying to understand a target audience is a lack of accurate testing. Testing should be nearly constant, and adjustments should regularly happen to ensure the information is as precise and well-developed as possible. 

For example, our professional digital marketing agency, ModFXMedia, can do more research, studies, and searches on more key terms. We can look at your company’s customer analytics, such as account-based demographics, interests, platforms, and devices.

Other benefits to working with a digital marketing agency:

• --You can gain access to industry-leading data and tools. With this, you can discover audiences for your brand and where those audiences are consuming media.

• --You gain a whole team who has experience with navigating new digital marketing methods. Experts in social media marketing and digital retargeting, can help your team utilize unfamiliar channels successfully.

• --You can work with an unbiased perspective when optimizing campaigns. A digital marketing agency can examine your efforts for what’s working, and what’s not. Then, they’ll guide you through the needed improvements to exceed expectations.

• --You can access assistance with creative endeavors as well. In addition to optimizing your channels and targeting strategy, a digital marketing agency can work with your team to create effective marketing assets.

Final Takeaway

As you can see, there are many advantages to knowing your target audience in digital marketing. The main benefit is accurately targeting the group that is most likely to convert. 

Just keep in mind that researching your right target audience(s) isn’t about just finding stats and numbers, it’s about finding people and what drives them. Just remember to focus on WHAT they want to do better, WHAT motivates them, WHAT they need, and WHO they are.

A digital marketing campaign’s success will depend on the platform, the method, the proper identification of the target market, and how you market to them to build loyalty. 

With a professional, dedicated digital marketing team behind you, your business can achieve its full potential. 

At ModFXMedia, we increase impressions, conversions, and help companies reach their goals. Our team works together to ensure your company reaches its full potential through our variety of digital marketing options. 

With state-of-the-art reporting, site analytics, & build-a-brand testing, we can track where every penny is best spent along with where your campaign is succeeding & where it needs a lift.
Click Here to learn more about what ModFXMedia can do for you & then schedule your FREE Strategy call with us today!