You’ve done it – you’ve created a wonderful product line or you offer services that simply can’t be beat. You’ve prepared a decent amount of content that you’re ready to share online to promote your goods or services. You’re confident your material is engaging and that is has all the right keywords sprinkled throughout. Your calls to action are appropriate and persuasive.
Sadly, none of that will matter if you don’t know who the members of your target audience are. And your hard work will matter even less if you can’t connect with those people on social media.
In recent years, social media marketing has evolved as a critical part of any effective digital marketing plan. Rather, social media marketing has become a vital piece of the digital marketing puzzle for companies that have found their audience on the appropriate social media websites.
Tips to Identify Your Target Audience for SMM
For SMM to be successful to any extent, it only makes sense that you’ll have to know who makes up your target audience. In general, marketing to a wide group of people isn’t as effective as promoting your goods or services to a well-defined audience of consumers can be.
When you market to a targeted audience, you know you’re promoting the things you sell to people who share characteristics that may make them more likely to have an interest in your products or services and to buy them. The first step to social media marketing is to research your target market.
Create Profiles for Your Ideal Clients
Once you know who the members of your overall target market are, you should create profiles for your ideal clients. You should name each profile you make and assign them as many personal details as possible. You’ll want to know how much each of your ideal clients earns, what their marital status is, whether they have children, where the live and work and what their values are, among other factors.
Making detailed profiles for your ideal clients and knowing them intimately will help you find similar people on social media.
Find the Appropriate Social Media Platforms
Having profiles of your sought-after clients will also make it much easier for you to identify the social media platforms they use most often. There’s no point in devising a social media strategy involving social channels the members of your target audience don’t use or don’t frequent regularly, after all.
Since 2012, the Pew Research Center has surveyed the use of social media platforms. Thanks to the center’s ongoing research, it’s reasonably easy to figure out which social media platforms you should use to connect with your target audience.
Facebook continues to be the most popular social media platform, followed by YouTube and then Instagram, which now has more than one billion users. Approximately 68 percent of American adults use Facebook, with about 75 percent of them logging into their Facebook accounts every day. Except for people who are 65 years-old or older, a majority of American adults across demographic and age groups use Facebook.
Around 78 percent of 18 – 24 year-olds use Snapchat, and 71 percent of those young adults use the platform several times every day. About 71 percent of the same age group uses Instagram and approximately 45 percent of them use Twitter.
Given the information just provided, it’s clear that different audiences are attracted to different social media platforms. If your target audience is younger, you’ll probably have better luck connecting with its members on Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram. If your target market consists largely of professionals who are 35 years old or older, your best bet may be LinkedIn.
If your target market is mostly women living in urban areas, Instagram should be one of the social platforms you use. Do Millennials, or people under the age of 35, account for a sizeable portion of your target audience? If so, Instagram should also be high on your list of must-use social media platforms.
Survey Your Existing Clients
While the statistics available through the Pew Research Center and other sources can certainly help you identify which social media sites you should use to interact with your target audience, you don’t need to rely on them alone. You may want to conduct surveys to find out where the members of your target audience spend their time on social platforms.
Conducting surveys is a best practice when it comes to content marketing and surveying your existing clients can help you with your social media management. If you’re going to conduct a survey, ask your current clients the following questions at a minimum:
- Which social media sites do you prefer, and which one is your absolute favorite?
- Do you read any blogs or listen to podcasts regularly? If so, what are they?
- Who do you follow on social media?
Create a Custom Audience on Social Media
Just about every social media platform allows you to upload your email database. If you do this using Facebook Ads Manager, you can literally create a custom audience that you can interact with almost immediately.
After you’ve created a custom audience based on your CRM, you can use Facebook’s administrative tools to generate an audience that closely resembles your custom audience. Your new audience will have many of the same characteristics that people in your custom audience do, which means you may soon be able to interact with new members of your target audience on social media.
Join Social Groups
You can expand your target audience on social media by joining social groups that have members who are similar to your ideal client profiles. Research the groups on the social platforms you use, join the ones that include promising prospects and participate in those groups with content that speaks directly to the audience you want to attract.
We Can Help You with Social Media Marketing
If you’re struggling to find your audience on social media, we can help. We’re SMM experts and we specialize in helping businesses find the right target audience across social media platforms. Read about our social media marketing services to learn how they can benefit your organization and improve your social media management. When you’re done, contact Beyond Custom Websites to schedule a consultation.