Have you ever driven your car without knowing about your final destination? No, because it would be a waste of time and money, because the spent fuel would do nothing…
The same happens with you when you don’t set any goals for your campaigns and marketing strategy in general. marketing goals The audience is characterized by characteristics common to the company’s customers. Its purpose is to establish a specific profile of a potential person who is likely to buy your product or service. An exercise that helps you segment a large market (and optimize your marketing campaigns) in order to focus on a specific group.
That’s why defining your ideal audience is an essential step. but How to define your marketing goal? Answer in this article!
1. Do market research
start by doing a study for Analyze all aspects of the market you want to communicate, You can achieve this by doing a SWOT analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. In French: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.
Classic but always effective, this method makes it possible to identify:
- the location of your target: local, national or international;
- demographic data: age, gender, profession, income level, marital status, etc .;
- Psychological data: values, hobbies, lifestyle, personality, attitude, behavior…;
- Fields of activity: medicine, accounting, non-profit associations, industry, etc .;
- market trends;
- economic change;
- customer buying habit;
- competition…
Knowing all of these factors is the first step in helping you identify your marketing target.
Download our FREE SWOT Matrix to complete your market research to make it easier for you.
2. Create accurate buyer personas
After gathering all this information about your market, you can create the ideal type of buyer. Asking who your buyer is helps analyze and answer several key targeting questions, such as:
- Age: To what age group or age groups is your product or service targeted?
- Financial position: Can your market segment afford your proposition and how often will they buy your product?
- Gender: Male, Female, Both… Who is the biggest part of your goal?
- Occupation: How does their occupational activity influence their purchasing decisions?
- Life situations: position, work, employer (or company size), family life, marital status, place of residence, etc.
This data will help you create specific audiences for your advertising campaigns on Google or social networks. But it is important to get the elements that will allow you to develop your marketing message.
To do this, you must also determine your target’s emotional needs and values. Which brings us to the next point…
3. Define the emotional needs of your marketing target
What does your ideal potential customer like, find exciting and interesting? What is their dominant behavior or personality, what is their opinion on certain events and lifestyle? determine the answers to these questions emotional needs of your audienceas well as its value.
Then another question arises: what is that quality that your target can identify with? answer this question will help you Create Memorable Marketing CampaignsClearly located and recognizable by your prospects.
For example :
- Brands like Naturalia and Biocoup value ecology;
- A brand like Redbull values ​​energy, surpasses itself;
- Apple’s image is based on style, but also on accessibility;
- Bledina espouses family values;
- Le Slip Français appears on Made in France technology and “French consumption”.
By finding the value that connects you to your prospects and customers, you’ll act directly on their emotions, which will make your marketing campaigns more effective.
4. Understand pain points
Price is an important element when making a decision, but we must not forget the main pain point of the prospect. Why does he need your products or services? what are you going to do to help her?
Like any problem, consumer pain points are as varied and diverse as your potential customers. However, not all prospects will be aware of those issues, which can make your marketing strategy more difficult because you need to open your eyes to it.
Also, pain points are not always the problem. This may be the objective to be accomplished or the optimization required. They can be grouped into 4 axes:
- financial : Your potential customers are spending too much money on their current service provider/solution/product and want to reduce their expenses.
- productivity : Your potential customers are wasting time using their current supplier/solution/product or want to use their time more efficiently.
- management : Your prospects want to improve a daily process, a gesture or a task that takes up their time or uses too many resources (financial, organizational or human).
- help : Your potential customers do not receive the guidance or support they need when using a service or as part of a strategy. Here, we also identify customers who find the item or service too complicated to use.
With these “categories” in mind, you can begin to think about your company’s marketing position, refining your goals.
5. Understand your target’s motivations
Your prospects have a pain point, right? So they are motivated to solve it. But what will motivate them to choose your business?
set a trigger factor, linked to the persona of your marketing target, will help you reach them during the decision-making process. It’s essential for writing your sales pages, your marketing ads, and even your product descriptions.
If we take some of the brands mentioned earlier in this article, here are the motivations that drive their consumers:
- Naturalia: In addition to its organic or bulk products, the brand is committed to actions in favor of the environment. What a difference it makes for the busiest consumers.
- Redbull: There are many energy drinks on the market, but Redbull is one of the most risky in sporting events. Its customers choose it for this image of quality: if it is an extreme sports partner, it is because it is efficient.
- Apple: When a consumer chooses Apple, it is for the recognized high-quality of the brand as well as for the image of a certain lifestyle that it conveys. This gives the buyers a sense of belonging.
6. Know Your Existing Customers
One of the best ways to identify your business marketing target is to know your current customers. You can achieve the 5 elements mentioned above through:
- review your website : It can help you to know the profile of visitors, how they navigate and which pages are most consulted. This way you identify the main needs of your visitors along with the socio-demographic parameters.
- test your social network With the data provided by various platforms, you know the socio-demographic profile of your customers as well as their connection habits.
- the inspection Marketing: You can learn more about the needs, values ​​and motivations of your target marketers by sending questionnaires to your customers. Don’t hesitate to take a satisfaction survey or ask specific questions, even on email, SMS or social networks. You can get valuable data.
- Opinion : What do your customer reviews say on your website or on specific sites? Again, you can get feedback relevant to your business.
7. Analyze the Competition
If you don’t already have an existing customer base (and even if you actually do), See what your competitors are doing , This exercise will help you understand the profile of your audience.
Explore their website, blog, social media pages and advertisements to understand their strategy. During your investigation, ask yourself the following questions:
- What are their segmentation techniques?
- Who is their ideal customer?
- Do they have a specific target market or multiple target markets? Which target market and why?
- How do they promote their products? What language do they use? What product features do they highlight?
- What is their release schedule? How often do they post messages or send emails?
Know your competitors as if you were their customer. Sign up for their newsletters and follow them on social media for interesting information.
8. Identify Opportunities with Competitive Mapping
Using competitor mapping is a good way to identify the target market for your website or marketing campaign. This is a simple diagram that allows youIdentify market gaps or the industry in which your product/service/website operates.
To achieve this:
- Create a Y axis and a vertical X axis to get four different segments.
- Enter your customers’ main criteria on each axis (for example, one “age” axis and another “income”, or a “needs” axis and another “quality of product”).
- Represent all of your competitors according to their customer base on this graph.
Once you’ve represented all of your competitors, look at the free space on the chart. This is where there is a void in the market!
in this way you can easily find your niche And identify your target, For example, you may find that there are many offers for formal and experienced professionals, but few that are aimed at casual professionals.
conclusion
Defining your target is an essential step in any marketing activity and campaign. After this step, you’ll be able to better determine your audience, compose your message, choose your visuals, and select the most appropriate content to meet your marketing and sales objectives.
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