Targeting your marketing: knowing what works for you

Marketing, when done well, can be key to your business’s growth and development. But marketing can also be counterproductive. 85% of mobile advertisers think they’re providing a positive experience. But only 47% of users agree. What does this show? We don’t always know what’s best for our audience.

With marketing, it’s less about what you’d like to do or what you think might work. Instead, it’s important you adapt your marketing to suit your audience. Take the time to figure out what works for your specific audience and make that the backbone of your strategy. This way the marketing you put out there will be appropriate, useful, and effective.

Know what you want

How will you know your marketing efforts are effective if you don’t know where you’re hoping to go? There’s no point building a marketing strategy if you don’t know what your business wants to get out of it. Marketing is supposed to propel your business forward. Lay out your short- and long-term business goals and use this to guide any marketing decisions. 

Knowing your audience

You can’t successfully market your business unless you know exactly who you’re speaking to. Who are the key audiences you want to target? Once you’ve decided this, approach your marketing with them in mind.

Without identifying your key audiences, you end up trying to reach everyone. And, inevitably, you can end up reaching no one at all. But if you know who your marketing is aimed towards, you’ll find it easier to communicate and get across exactly what you want to say. The age, interests, and common problems of your audience will influence how you should approach your marketing and what will be effective at getting you heard.

While you want to market with your key audiences in mind, also try to remain open and inclusive to new audiences. Business growth is the name of the game so try not to limit your reach.

Buyer personas

Based on the knowledge you build of your audience, establish buyer personas. These are general representations of your ideal customers. You should build personas for all of your key audience groups.

There are different types of shoppers out there; some need more information and guidance, some want a quick and easy process, whereas some are just holiday or seasonal shoppers. It’s worth keeping all these shopper types in mind so you don’t end up excluding any groups from marketing efforts.

You can use these personas to strategise and keep your marketing on track and at its most productive. Make sure everything you do matches with these personas in some way. You won’t completely satisfy each group, but personas help you balance and strategise more effectively. A lot of the time, it’s about finding a common ground that satisfies the most personas at one time.

Different channels

When it comes to marketing, some methods and channels will work better for your audience than others. For example, if you’ve got an older audience, Instagram might not be the best choice. There’s no point in wasting time and resources on a marketing channel that will never work for your brand. 

You could also use different marketing methods to target different groups within your audience. If you’re trying to reach a mix of ages, a balance of social media for younger ages and more long-form content for an older audience could help you to include everyone. You’re not limited to the number of marketing channels you use. Find what works for you and build a strategy that best fits with the characteristics of your particular audience.

Marketing can take your business from a small start-up to a big business. But only if you take the time to build an effective strategy. If you’re not careful, you could end up wasting valuable time and resources on marketing that gets you nowhere. With some extra thought, you can target your marketing to hit the right people and achieve exactly what your business needs to grow.

No matter the size of your business, Shopit gives you full access to every eCommerce tool you need to grow further. With your marketing efforts bringing in new customers, it’s important your software can keep up. Our multi-site feature means you can control all of your individual brands from one central, easy to access place. Sign up for our free trial today.