Your Target Audience May Not Be Aligned With Your Marketing

Ahhh, the ol’ “Who’s your target audience? question — I used to hate this question early on in my career, but I have come to realize that that question is part of a set of the most essential questions in marketing; it is, at the end of the day, all about knowing your audience.

Do You Ever Wish You Could Learn To Market Like A Pro?

Here’s a little secret to good marketing, all marketing secrets are subtle. The simple act of knowing & understanding your target audience is one of those subtleties and I’ll give you an example: When writing, if you list a feature, you need to also list the benefit; even if it seems obvious to you.

So, How Do You Discover Your Target Audience?

Rather than targeting everyone, you should focus on the ideal customer for your business. Many small business owners make the mistake of thinking that their product or service is right for everyone.

For example, targeting Facebook Ads to “all” (genders, ages, etc.) when your product is clearly for women over forty doesn’t make much sense. Not only is advertising to everyone rarely valid, but it can actually hurt your marketing efforts by annoying people and wasting your advertising budget unnecessarily.

Follow these steps when identifying your target audience:

1) Determine your customer’s demographics. Unless you’re selling oxygen, not everyone needs your product or service. So who does? Men or women? Old or young? Conservative or liberal? What is their economic bracket, education level, and interests? Once you’ve narrowed the criteria down, it’s a lot easier to focus your marketing strategy on those who are most likely to need what you are offering.

2) Determine your customer’s needs. Now that you have a clear idea about the type of person you’ll be targeting to, you’ll have to identify their specific needs in the context of what your business is offering. In other words, what is the problem they are having that your product or service is the solution to? By putting yourself in their shoes and asking the questions they will have, you’ll be able to address their concerns in your marketing message before they occur.

3) Determine how your customer will learn about you. We all have friends who prefer texting to calling, so we know that not everyone is receptive to the same modes of communication. Is your ideal customer older? Then you may want to run print ads. If they’re Millennials who have never even read a newspaper, then you may want to run Twitter ads. Is your audience local or global? Are they a trendy bunch or a niche crowd? The best way to reach your target audience is via the channels from which they get their information already.

4) Assume your customers are mobile. These days more and more people are connecting with the world through their mobile devices, whether it’s to read news, shop or communicate. In fact, tech analyst Mary Meeker found that smartphones are outdistancing all other devices, especially the desktop or laptop computer, for Internet use. Of the 2.8 billion Internet users worldwide, 2.1 billion are mobile, a 23 percent increase from last year. So however you reach your target audience, make sure you include mobile advertising.

So in my own research — knowing that many of you are marketers and business owners, I came across this “Blogging Statistics and Trends in 2020” list which contains some nuggets that all marketers and online property owners should be up to speed on.

Latest Blogging Statistics and Trends in 2020

(This list is from a great Blog Post by Codeless)

1. The average blog post length is 1,050 words (Source: Orbit Media)
2. The average word count of content that ranks at the top of Google’s search engine results is between 1,140-1285 words (Source: SearchMetrics)
3. On average, only 18% of companies’ blog posts are over 750 words (Source: Curata)
4. Longer, in-depth blog posts generate 9x more success in lead generation than short ones (Source: Curata)
5. Each business blogging post takes on average 3 hours 16 minutes per piece to complete (Source: OrbitMedia)
6. The median average time spent reading an article is 37 seconds (Source: NewsCred)
7. Marketers who prioritize business blogging efforts are 13x more likely to see positive ROI (Source: HubSpot)
8. Companies that publish 16+ blog posts per month to their business blog get nearly 3.5x more organic traffic than those that publish 0-4 monthly (Source: HubSpot)
9. Companies that publish 16+ blog posts per month generated 4.5x more leads than companies publishing 0-4 monthly. (Source: HubSpot)
10. People will tend to read blogs with titles between 6-13 words. These blogs get the most consistent amount of traffic and hits (Source: HubSpot)
11. On average, companies with blogs produce 67% more leads per month than those without (Source: TheContentPanel)
12. 43% of readers skim blog posts (Source: HubSpot)
13. 36% of people prefer list-based headlines (Source: ConversionXL)
14. Odd-numbered listicle headlines outperform even ones by 20% (Source: CMI)
15. Including a colon or hyphen in your title can result in a 9% improvement (Source: CMI)
16. The “How-To” headline is a close cousin to the listicle, which is the third most popular headline preference at around 17% (Source: ConversionXL)
17. 60% of consumers feel engaged/positive with a brand or business after reading custom content on their blog (Source: ContentPlus)
18. Blogging is responsible for 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed inbound links (Source: DemandMetric)
19. 47% of B2B buyers read 3-5 blog posts or content pieces prior to talking with a salesperson (Source: DemandGenReport)
20. 55% of bloggers report checking analytics and social statistics very often (Source: OrbitMedia)
21. The top 3 blogging success metrics today are page views, shares/likes, and time spent on page (Source: Curata)
22. 1 in 10 blog posts are “compounding”, meaning that organic search steadily increases their traffic over time and improve lead generation (Source: HubSpot)
23. 1 compounding blog post generates as much traffic as 6 regular posts combined (Source: HubSpot)
24. Compounding blog posts generate 38% of all blog traffic (Source: HubSpot)
25. 29% of leading marketing professionals reuse and repurpose blog content for their business (Source: Curata)
26. 64% of B2B marketers outsource blog copywriting (Source: TopRank)
27. Top content marketing leaders (B2C & B2B) outsource 24% of their blog post writing as part of their inbound marketing strategy (Source: Curata)
28. 25% of marketers don’t outsource any content marketing creation (Source: MarketingBuddy)
29. Writing content is the most commonly outsourced content marketing activity (Source: MarketingBuddy)
30. 57% of business bloggers outsourced blog posts from contributed or guest blogging posts (Source: Curata)
31. 81% of marketers plan to increase the use of original written content (or a guest post) for blog posts (Source: Social Media Examiner)
32. 52% of bloggers do not use a formal editor (Source: OrbitMedia)
33. 69% of companies use an editorial calendar for blog posts (Source: Curata)
34. 69% of marketers say they plan to increase their blogging frequency in 2016-17 (Source: Social Media Examiner)
35. 60% of all marketers believe blog creation to be their top inbound marketing strategy for lead generation (Source: State of Inbound)
36. 59% of B2B marketers consider blogs the most valuable channel to increase their audience (Source: DemandMetric)
37. 76% of B2B marketers blog often, and 73% publish case studies often (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
38. 82% of marketers who blog consistently see positive ROI from inbound links and increased rankings in search engines (Source: State of Inbound)
39. 82% of marketers curate blog content (Source: IMN)
40. 16% of marketers curate content daily, 48% curate at least once a week (Source: Curata)
41. Over 50% of marketers that curate content say it has increased brand visibility, thought leadership, SEO and organic traffic (Source: Curata)
42. 41% of marketers that curate content say it has increased the quality of their lead generation (Source: Curata)
43. Headline changes have the power to provide a 10% increase in clicks from internet users (Source: MarketingExperiments)
44. Editing down your headline or title to eight words can result in a 21% CTR increase (Source: CMI)
45. Negative messaging can result in a 63% click-through rate lift over more positive ones (Source: Outbrain)
46. 44% of marketers say producing quality blog content is their biggest challenge (Source: Inc)
47. Nearly 60% of marketers reuse blog content 2-5 times (Source: OzContent)
48. 24.5% of blogger report getting “strong results” from their blogs (Source: OrbitMedia

I’d Love To Hear Your Feedback On How Your Target Audience Was Discovered!!

Let’s set up a short chat about how you used this info to discover your target and drive your message to your target audience.

 

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