If you want to increase traffic to your website, a digital campaign is a great tactic. But, before you dive headfirst into building a campaign, you'll want to ensure you know your target customers (audience) and how to reach them. Understanding your audience is essential because you want to maximize your marketing investment dollars. You can do this if you have a laser focus on who your audience is and how to reach them.
But, there's homework involved. It will take research, interviews, surveys, and possibly focus groups to uncover this information. Skipping this step will result in you spending valuable time and money on the wrong audience and not achieving your return on investment (ROI).
How do you identify your target audience? You'll need to determine who they are (demographic data), what they buy (transactional information) and how they buy (behavioral data). Tip: Narrow your research focus to what you're selling and the market you want to penetrate.
First, gather the information that relates to who they are (use current customer information, Google Analytics, surveys, and interviews to uncover this data):
Where are they located (geographically)?
What are their demographics (age, sex, marital status, race, etc.)? Can you group them by similarity?
What about their education level, income, profession, or occupation?
Determine their psychographics (what's their lifestyle - gamers, fashionistas, outdoorsy, etc.)
With this data you've uncovered, begin to segment your target audience into groups. For example, parents, single people, business owners, high income, homeowners, etc. Select groups that make sense for your business/product/offering. Then, group your existing customers into these segments.
Next, gather transactional data you have from your current customers. Identify volume, time of purchase, products/offerings purchased, etc. Tip: During this research phase, you may find products or offerings that are underperformers and need to be eliminated from your mix. Segment this data with your newly created groups. For example, the parent group purchases xx widgets versus the single group, which buys xx gadgets.
Lastly, determine how each audience segment makes their purchase. Are they clicking on a Google ad or a social ad? If a social ad, which social platform? Are they purchasing in a brick-and-mortar store or buying subscriptions online? Identifying purchasing behaviors will take research (use your data), surveys, and possibly focus groups to uncover the necessary information.
Once you have this information, you can create your customer personas. Here's a great article and tool from Hubspot to help build your customer personas.
Now that you have your customer personas, you can create laser-focused campaigns with the right message on the right platform for your customer persona. The information in the persona will help you determine your go-to-market strategy for your digital campaigns.
Lastly, as you begin your campaign, you'll gather new data and insights on your audience, be sure to update your personas to continue maximizing your investment dollars.
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