An important component of crafting a
social media marketing strategy is reaching your target audience. If you’re not providing your target audience with content that’s relevant to them, it’ll be harder to attract followers and drive engagement. However, in order to reach and grow your target audience, it’s crucial that you do research to set up your social media strategy for success.
Here are five steps for reaching your audience to make your social media marketing more effective.
Essentials for Reaching Your Target Audience
Research is key to growing your social media audience because the data will allow you to understand your target audience’s needs and wants. By following these five steps, you’ll be in a better position to attract and engage more followers.
1. Define your target audience.
The information in your buyer personas is perfect for helping you to define your social media target audience. However, if you haven’t created buyer personas, think about your current customers’ characteristics like their job, age, location, etc.
Check out your analytics to gather demographic details as well as look at data from past and current campaigns to build on what you already know about your audience. Also, answer questions like "What are my audience's pain points?" or "What problems does my product or service solve?" to comprehend your target audience.
2. Find out where your audience is active.
After defining your target audience, find out where they’re most active online. According to
Sprout Social, the largest age group on
Instagram is 25-34 whereas
LinkedIn’s largest age group skews older at 46-55. It’s important to understand where your audience likes to hang out online to determine which social media platforms to prioritize in your strategy.
3. Check out your competitors.
Take a look at your competitors with large social media audiences to see what’s working for them. Take note of what platforms they're active on, who engages with their posts, and what hashtags they use. You can also search for your target keywords on social networks to see which competitors appear. Another competitor research tactic is using your own analytics to see what other pages your audience follows.
4. Survey your customers.
In addition to looking at your own analytics, it also helps to get insights directly from current customers. Surveys are a great way to better understand your target audience and learn which platforms they prefer, the type of content they consume, and who they follow.
5. Search social media groups.
Social networks like
Facebook and LinkedIn have a variety of groups that users with similar interests can join to connect with each other. Groups can provide a lot of information about your target audience such as what they’re posting, which content generates the most engagement, and what tone of voice they use. Additionally, you can create your own group to build a community.
Develop a Strategy to Reach Your Audience
Understanding and defining your target audience is essential for developing a
social media strategy that drives audience growth. Following the five steps above also allows you to figure out which platforms and posts are worth your effort so you can attract and engage more followers. If your social media marketing isn’t reaching your target audience as you want,
Sales & Marketing Technologies is here to help your business develop and implement a growth-driven strategy.