What’s one of the biggest mistakes you’re making right now?

No, it’s not your prices or your content marketing strategy, it’s something much more important: You’re not targeting your market in the right way.

You can’t achieve great marketing returns if you haven’t properly targeted your market, because the “who” determines the “how.”

Marketing guru Jay Baer put it succinctly when he said, “the only job that content marketing has is to create behaviors among target audiences that benefit the business.”

Notice those two key words, ‘target audiences?’ And that other word, ‘benefit?’ That’s the sweet spot of achieving all your marketing goals.

But if you don’t know where to start, fear not, because if you implement these five strategies, you will not only properly target your market, you will also create content that is tailor-made to engage, entice and encourage prospects to become long-term customers.

1. What Want and Need Does Your Product/Service Satisfy?

First, you must identify the want and need your product or service satisfies in your consumers.

Why is this important?

Because consumers buy products and services for two main reasons: to solve a problem, or to fulfill a want.

So identifying the problem that your product or service resolves, or the want that it satisfies will tell you WHO would most likely benefit from your business.

For example, let’s say your company makes a baby bath tub that heats water to the exact temperature that is safe and comfortable for a toddler.

This would solve the problem of mothers having to monitor the bath water to ensure it isn’t too hot, and it saves time and adds convenience.

2. Who Would Benefit From the Problems You Resolve?

The next step is to determine based on the want or need you are satisfying, what group of consumers is most likely to find your product and services most beneficial?

In the above example, mothers most often bathe their babies, so your self-heating bath tub would most likely appeal to mothers who want to save time, and who want the security of knowing the water temperature is always going to be safe for their babies.

3. Create Your Buyer Persona

There’s been a lot of talk lately about buyer personas, and a lot of that talk is high-minded and let’s face it, pretentious.

Saying the words ‘buyer persona’ makes some people feel superior, but the truth is, it’s just a fancy term that refers to a comprehensive picture of your ideal customer based on factors such as where the buyer shops, what the buyer fears, challenges the buyer faces, how the buyer decides what to buy, and when the buyer decides to buy.

But as marketing expert Tony Zambito said, buyer personas are NOT profiles; they are all about buying behavior.

Although your ideal customer persona is fictional, it requires real-world methods to build the right personas.

You can take advantage of tools such as Facebook Insights, or Google Analytics Audience Reports to obtain valuable demographic and psychographic information about your prospective target group.

You can also conduct questionnaires, surveys and live group sessions to drill down into the emotional and psychological factors that motivate buying within your target group.

4. Target Your Content

Once you’ve created your buyer personas, you can now begin the task of determining what content is most likely to appeal to this group.

In the example we’ve been using – mothers with babies – effective content would speak to the importance of convenience, safety and comfort in all aspects of baby care, including bath time.

Most likely, you would need a blog that provides actionable information that is short, concise and entertaining, because this target group doesn’t have a lot of free time.

In fact, that time constraint probably tells you that video content would do well within this group, because it’s visual, easy to consume and short.

5. Target Your Influencers

Influencer marketing still works if you do it right, and once you’ve identified your target consumers and created content (and ads) for that group, it’s time to seek out the influencers in your market.

Sticking with the same example, you would seek out influential bloggers whose niche is new mothers, and establish relationships through guest-blogging and by sponsoring conferences where these bloggers come together to interact.

Remember that influencers are multipliers for your brand, because they have already established credibility and authority within your target market.

Laser-Focused Marketing

When you know whom you are selling to, you also answer the question of why they would buy your products and services.

But more importantly, you then know what content is most effective at attracting your targeted consumer, what ads they would respond to, and the people your market finds credible. Knowing your market is the foundation of all your strategies, so spend time on this critical step, and you’ll find a much higher ROI.

If you have questions about marketing or need marketing advice, contact us today. We can help you get the best out of your marketing tactics and give you exclusive tools you won’t find anywhere else.