What if you completely wasted an amazing social media strategy?
We all know that social media is one of the best ways to grow a brand and reach audiences in a whole new way. However, you must correctly identify your audience first in order for any of this to be effective.
Wondering how to identify and then reach your targeted audience on social media? Keep reading to discover the answer!
Survey Power
There are many modern solutions to help you define the intended audience, and we’ll be touching on several of them. However, one “old school” method still works surprisingly well: surveys!
Your business should constantly be closing the gap between who you think your customers are and who they actually are. And surveys are one of the most direct ways to do this.
Many social media platforms allow you to build surveys and quickly post them for followers. You can also create surveys with third-party software and post it to social media or send via e-mail.
Once you find out more about who your customers are, you can tailor your product and social media marketing accordingly!
CRM Savvy
Do surveys feel a little too old school? In that case, your business will want to embrace social CRM.
As the name implies, social CRM is a form of CRM created specifically for social media. And it helps you to reach the target audience by automating the collection of important data.
Basically, every online interaction a customer has with your social media platforms creates a data point. And CRM helps to examine these data points for important information as well as emerging trends.
The best social CRMs embrace a “work smarter, not harder” mentality by interacting with the existing tools provided by social media. And it’s important for you to understand exactly how these tools work.
Group up
Facebook is one of the most popular platforms for a small business to grow its audience. And this platform also provides one of the easiest ways for you to identify a target audience.
As you may already know, Facebook allows users to create groups based on similar interests. And it’s very easy for you to search for groups by using related key terms.
Once you have identified such groups, you may try to join them and market to them directly. Or you may use your time in the group to more indirectly learn more about who your audience is.
Such data collection can be invaluable when you begin to create buyer personas (more on this in a minute).
From Groups to People
This next tip is related to the previous one. It involves using the groups you have found as a way to further identify individuals who may be interested in your products and services.
After you have “liked” a group, you can browse to find different fans of that group. You can also search for related posts that the Facebook algorithm has identified as similar to the original page. This lets you find even more people who may be interested in your business.
Keep in mind that while this does take time, the payoff is potentially quite large. Even a small handful of major fans with a lot of online clout can help your business to practically explode in popularity overnight.
Create a Persona (or Two)
Things like CRM are great because they provide a ton of useful data. However, that data can often seem abstract to you and your marketing team. How are you supposed to market to a bunch of numbers on a screen?
That’s why you should take your data and create buyer personas. These are basically fleshed-out personas of the kind of people who are interested in your products.
Having an actual person in mind can help people create better marketing. And the personas can provide insight into other behaviors and perceptions that can help you reach your target audience.
Hit the Books
So far, we have focused a lot on collecting specific data about your specific customers. However, getting such granular information is not always possible.
If that’s the case, or if you simply want some additional info, then you can always “hit the books.” That means doing some research on general customer perceptions, buying strategies, and so on.
Places like the Pew Research Center have great info about the online habits of customers. This is a great starting point for your research or a way to supplement the information you already have.
Question Everything
The easiest way to find more information about your customers on social media is to ask them. And you don’t always need to frame everything in terms of a formal survey.
For example, customers like business social media because it provides opportunities for engagement and interaction. You need to make sure you are providing these opportunities as often as possible.
One of the best ways to do this is to ask customers questions. Even questions about how their weekends went give people a chance to chime in and talk about themselves.
This lets you collect valuable information while fostering a sense of community.
Location Search
In an increasingly global world, it’s local marketing that has proven difficult. How can you know you are targeting the people in the vicinity you wish to reach?
One simple way to do this is to take advantage of the location search. This is a feature available on Twitter and other platforms that allows you to search users by city, by zip code, and so on.
Once you identify your target audience, you can follow them, tag them in messages, and otherwise reach them in ways that traditional marketing never could.
Social Media Targeted Audience: The Bottom Line
Now you know more about reaching your targeted audience. But do you know who can help you accomplish your social media goals?
At Drive Social Media, we specialize in helping small businesses grow their online brand. To see how we can help your own business grow, check out our social services today!
