6 Steps to targeting your ideal client online

With so much activity happening on the web these days, reaching out to your target audience isn’t easy. You have to compete against many who have filled the SEO space with content as well as spam.

This in turn has made the net-savvy audience more skeptical than ever who refuse to interact with any form of content that is self-promoting.

Therefore, having a marketing strategy that allows you to know and understand your target client is a must!

You need to have targeted ads and communications. How you distribute your content about your product / service plays an essential role in defining the success of your brand, too.

Here are 6 easy steps to help you cut through the noise (of spammers) and reach out to your ideal buyer successfully.

1) Develop a client profile

Profiling is more than just having a mug shot of your client along with his or her name. You need to evaluate who you’ll be selling your products or services to so that you make your marketing strategy accordingly.

Apart from having information about their personalities, you need to grasp what they do and how your product or service meets their needs.

• Try and get to know the attitude of your ideal customers towards products in your industry.
• Does your ideal buyer have the authority to make the purchasing decision for your product or company?
• What do they like? Dislike?
• What characteristics do they share?
• What are they interested in?
• How do they shop for products or services like yours?

Having all this information will definitely make a difference.

For example, the secret behind such a rapid growth of Skullcandy is that its founder researched and analyzed their ideal customers were even before taking a plunge in the market.

Here’s what they know about their target audience:

• ranges between 12 and 26 years of age
• where its target audience goes for shopping
• what apps they download the most

Not sure how to collect information on your target audience? Just ask.

2) Collect meaningful and actionable data

Understanding your clients better is not as tough as you might think, but you need to determine their buying power in order to engage them properly. You’ll struggle to sell Rolexes to poor college kids, after all.

Try and find out your target audience’s:

• financial status,
• sales patterns,
• demographics and
• site behavior.

The more information you have about your clients and prospects, the easier it will be for you to sell your product or services to them.

3) Build detailed buyer personas

Buyer personas are nothing but fictional representation of your ideal clients.

You can have 1, 2 or 20 personas, depending upon your organization and customer size. However, I suggest you to keep it at the minimum of 2.

Creating personas helps in segmenting your audience and creating targeted content. Have a look at some surprising stats that reveal why it is important to build buyer personas:

• 52% of marketers support 2 to 4 roles and buyer personas with dedicated content. (Source: Curata.com)
• 85% of marketers use buyer personas for content marketing and messaging while only 28% use buyer persona for assessing market challenges and problems. (Source: Tonyzambito.com)
• Content segmentation is 53% by product/service category and 40% by buyer persona. (Source: Slideshare.net)

4) Identify your best channels for communication

After you have identified the behavior of your ideal client towards your product or service, you need to know the appropriate communication channel and the format they prefer.

• While some of your buyers may like reading, others may love videos more.
• They may or may not like email marketing.
• The client may be more of a Twitteratis than being interested in pinning.
• You can also publish articles on sites frequently visited by your target audience.
• You might brief them about your product or service at conferences.

Just start thinking on how your target audience can receive the information you want to share with them – guest posts? Social Media? Ads? Your messages should be a part of the content they see or read daily.

5) Create compelling content

You have just 30 seconds to convince your client that you can help him, popular marketing wisdom suggests. Therefore, create content that forces your client to take an action.

And keep this in mind: your buyer is much likely to come back if you’re telling him what he needs to know rather than trying to sell him your product.

• Don’t just present facts, but make your content interesting by including videos, images, etc.
• Make your readers think about the product or service through your writing.
• Try and evoke an emotional response.
• Don’t try to cover every aspect of a topic but leave a little wiggle room in your piece of content.
• Turn your clients’ problems and desires into powerful copy to sell your services.

6) Grow your presence on social media

Your presence on social media should be visible and viable so that you are able to attract your target audience. Here’s how:

• Try and spread across the maximum number of platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
• Closely watch when your target audience comes online and post during that time so that you are visible and effective.

The ease with which a subscriber becomes a follower matches the speed with which a disgruntled follower can leave your “flock” and rouse others to do the same.

Keep your audience engaged by offering them discounts on your products or service or advice about something. Also, make sure you have a creative social media page with clear CTAs.

7) Bonus!

Don’t forget to use the best SEO practices to improve your search engine rankings. And always make sure that you have quality content, as great marketing to poor quality won’t win you any clients.

Your thoughts

As always, please share your thoughts in the comments. If you enjoyed this post, share it on twitter, and never hesitate to hit me up with any questions, critiques, or feedback.

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