Blindly launching marketing campaigns and hoping it gets to your ideal customer is the quickest way to failure. Successful businesses can attest to the importance of precisely identifying your target audience before spending even a dime on ads or influencers. The selection of the target market varies according to the brand’s needs.
Different brands, such as Nike and YouTube, have gained a foothold in their respective industries by accurately determining who they should market their goods/services to. It doesn’t even have to be for major brands like those mentioned. Say you are a grocery supplier and need to make an impact in the competitive industry that is the grocery business. Understanding your potential customers can be vital as well. Here are five tips on how to determine your business’ potential customers:
Narrow Your Gaze
To market a product/service efficiently, especially for something that is niche-specific like the grocery industry, it’s important to prioritize your efforts and resources. Focus your efforts on what needs your product/service can fulfill, who would best appreciate your value propositions, and what attributes can be used to funnel your market. Let’s use a foldable baby stroller as a hypothetical example to go over these criteria.
Who would most likely buy or use a foldable baby stroller? Who could find the value in an easy-to-fold and compact stroller, enough for them to buy it? What is the primary attribute that can quickly narrow down your initial market i.e. age, gender, income bracket?
Look At Your Current Customer Base
If you are a grocery supplier that already has customers, compile their data into a spreadsheet. It makes sense to start your search for the “ideal customer” by looking at who is already buying from you. Furthermore, who is following you on social media and interacting with your posts? Who is buying your supplies? Again, using a funnel approach can help you better understand your target demographic. Age, location, and language are data that you should be collecting and monitoring. By doing this process you can easily select the target market.
If, for instance, your flagship product is a meme maker online, look at what age range your most active website visitors belong to. When looking at your social media posts, check what language is most dominant in these interactions to help narrow down your audience’s country of origin. Social media seems like something that might be a tad far-fetched for a business like a grocery supplier; however, bringing some personality to your customers can make them feel as though they have some special connection with you.
Look At Your Competitors
Your competitors aren’t going anywhere, so you might as well capitalize on their presence. Observe how they market their brand and to whom. Even subtle details in their marketing videos and text messages, such as color themes and font styles, can reveal the kind of audience they are attempting to reach. Pick one or two other grocery suppliers whose operations closely mirror yours.
Take note of which channels they are most actively marketing in e.g. radio, TV, and social media. In addition, determine how often they release new marketing content, how much their budget is, and what their average ad cost is. This process is easy and very much practiced for selecting a target market.
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Consider Psychographic Attributes
Psychographics refers to the intimate traits of your consumer, such as personality, values and beliefs, interests and hobbies, and lifestyle. These personal attributes play a strong role in what a person decides to buy and what value propositions he/she prioritizes. Using the previous hypothetical product example, consider what kind of lifestyle the parents of someone shopping for a foldable and compact stroller live. Are they buying the stroller because they frequent hiking trails and beaches or for concerts and sports events? The answer to this question can then be used to decide what new features to add to the stroller or what accessories to upsell it with. These additional attributes help create a more accurate customer persona for you to target.
Employ Social Listening
Social listening, as the name implies, is simply listening in on the conversations surrounding your brand or market. Monitor what keywords consumers are using to find your product or brand and what hashtags are being used on social media for posts that are related to your business.
Even if you are not tagged or followed, listening, and then reaching out in response to the post is a good approach to find your target audience. Social listening can also uncover other hashtags and keywords that your ideal customers are using, which you can then add and test on your next posts. This new strategy can be really helpful in the select target market.
Finding your target audience requires a deep understanding of who you are as a grocery supplier. Ask yourself – who do you want to buy your product and support your brand? You should also ask your employees that same question. Their collective feedback can reveal clues as to what kind of customer you should be serving.
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