by Jerry Mooney
When you market your company, you need to make sure that you are attracting the interest of people who would be most interested in buying your products or using your service. We are of course talking about the target customer. Why is the target customer so important?
The key fact to remember here is that no product or service is universal. Regardless of how great you think your product is, there is nothing in this world that everyone wants to buy. Let’s take a look at the movie industry as an example here.
Take a look at the world box office, and you’ll see that the highest grossing film is Avatar at 2.7 billion which is impressive, right? It’s pretty darn close to a universal product, but it’s not quite there, and despite the staggering number, if you poll people you’ll find that a lot of people have never actually seen this movie. So regardless of the box office, there will always be plenty of people who never actually buy a ticket. Why? It’s just not their type of movie regardless of the greatest selling point at that time, a real 3D experience.
It’s the same for any product. There will always be people who aren’t interested, and that means you need to target those who are. But how do you find these individuals? That’s what we’re going to look at today and make sure you hit the mark with all your marketing.
Before The Funnel Entrance
We’re going to be looking at the marketing funnel today but before we enter that it’s important to take preemptive action. Before you start marketing, you need to know who your target customer is. This is the only way you’ll be able to find them and attract them. To do that, you need to brainstorm. Think about the people who would buy your products. What do they look like, what’s their salary, what do they need and what problems are they facing. You can see how these questions paint a picture about not just how to market your product but other key details too like where you should set the price.
You may want to discuss this with your business partners or colleagues to see if you can form a picture of your customer. Don’t forget, there are probably different groups of customers too. For instance, you might have a private buyer but if you offer bulk orders, you could also provide services to businesses looking to sell wholesales. This is true for businesses offering services as well. Take construction as an example. A construction company can offer their services to people adding extensions onto their home and big business owners or property developers.
This is something to keep in mind. Each target customer group will require a different marketing campaign.
How Do Searches Start?
It’s crucial to understand that well over 90 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine and a keyword search. What does this tell you? The majority of customers know what they are looking for but have no idea how to find it. Very few will immediately head to a website, and this means that you do have the opportunity to steal a few customers from the competition.
Of course, to do this, you need to make sure that customers can find you online. That means you need to think about SEO or Adwords. Now, SEO is tricky because it actually covers a wide range of different online marketing areas. Social media, content, and time on your site all impact search ranking. PPC is seemingly a little more simple but still difficult to benefit from without expert attention. As such, you need to make sure that you are hiring a marketer, unless you already have expertise in this area.
If you hire the right team you should have no problem making sure that customers find your business. But what happens after they do?
It’s All About Content
How do you create compelling targeting content that is going to hit the mark? Well, we suggest that you think about creating content that tells a story, talking to the reader or user in a way that is friendly. Introduce a problem and then tell them the effects of that problem, before offering your company as the solution. Do this, and you will have created actionable content where users have a reason to head to your site and check out your product or service.
That’s just the beginning though because you also need to make sure that you are getting this content seen by as many people as possible. To do this, it needs to be shareable, and your social media game must be on point. Shareability is about making the content eye-catching or compelling. Info-graphics are a great way to do this because they can be both and are easy to share. However, if you want to make sure that your networking is effective, use a social media agency. They can manage all the areas of your network for you and make sure that customers feel connected as well as compelled to buy from your business.
Make Things Easy
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Finally, you need to remember that consumers are easily distracted or lid away. In the world of sponsored content and online promotion, there’s always one more ad to click on. That means that you need to get them from the top of the funnel to the end as quickly as possible without losing them along the way. It is important that your site is working effectively because if it isn’t this is the first way you can lose the customer.
As well as this it needs to be simple to navigate. You can do this by using links and other tools to guide customers where you want them to go such as your online shop or perhaps your contact details. Finally, actionable content subtly yet quickly encourages customers to take action and commit to a purchase or at the very least, contact your company directly.
Do this, and you will hit the bulls-eye marketing your business.