Whether you are starting your own business or are newly entering the world of social media, there are some important things you need to identify first. Who is your audience? Which social networks are they active on? How do they spend their time? You may think establishing a relationship with your target audience is going to be a simple task, but that’s not always the case. Just like making new friends, building a trusting relationship with your audience will take time and effort. Here are a few tips for properly researching and locating your specific audience.
Determine Your Audience
Let’s start by determining who your audience is. Men that enjoy sports? Women who have kids? While these target demographics may be accurate, specifying even further will be more beneficial for your business. Creating a fake persona of your ideal customer can help guide you to your ideal target audience on any of your various social media platforms. Challenge yourself to go as far as figuring out what he or she does for fun on the weekends or what their level of education is. Determining these kinds of specifics will make your targeting much more beneficial.
Vary Your Target Audience
Meet Lisa and Dan. Although these two may both fit into your ideal target audience, they could not be more different. This means that the way you target your two ideal potential customers needs to be very different as well. For Lisa, a busy mother of two, seeing things on social media that will help benefit her home life is what she is searching for. She likes creative DIY projects, organizing hacks, healthy recipes, and activities to keep her little ones entertained. For Dan, a young bachelor who does not have the responsibility of parenthood, he is more interested in things like reading sports articles, finding local places to get a good burger with his buddies, and blogs about fitness. Knowing your audience is one of the most crucial pieces in creating a social media presence.
Discover Audience Size
Now that you have chosen your target audience, how big is it? Using Facebook Ads Manager can be an easy way to determine whether your audience is too broad or too narrow. For example, the image below shows the results of a search for people in Los Angeles who are female, between the ages of 25-45 and have recently become a new parent. The potential reach of this search is only 23,000 people. This may mean that your targeting is a little too specific. Although Facebook Ads reaches a large group of people, only about 60% of the population belongs to this social network. So, to completely reach your target audience, you’ll need to know more information about them.
Survey Your Audience
Another great way to determine how you can better reach your target audience is through a survey. There are many free survey tools that are simple to use that can help with audience segmentation such as SurveyMonkey and Google Forms. You can include questions to find out what social media platforms they prefer using, what kinds of blogs they enjoy reading, and what they hope to learn or see from following a brand/company. Do they want to see creative photography like on Instagram, or do they prefer articles on DIY projects like on Pinterest? Determining your target audience’s platform of choice will help you determine your social media strategy and approach.
Next Steps
After you define your audience you need to reach them. It is best to start with creating custom content and putting together an advertising budget based on your company’s goals. At the end of each month you should analyze the results of your ad performance and campaign metrics and make any appropriate changes to help enhance your campaigns for maximum impact. If your business needs help, you can also leave it up to our social media professionals. Check out our Social Advertising page or contact us today to learn more about how Go Local can help!