One of the biggest challenges of small business online marketing is finding and reaching out to the people who are most likely to become regular customers. So how do you connect with them? According to American City Business Journals columnist Spider Graham, small business owners should take the following steps to identify their audience:
- Acknowledge that you have a specific audience in mind – While you may think that your product or service is useful to "everyone," this is probably not the case. It's also difficult to craft a message that will appeal to a varied population, rather than a narrow one.
- Determine market criteria – You should start with demographic points to determine who would benefit most from your service. Do you have an age or gender in mind? Or possibly a geographic location?
- Identify what your customers want – Try to look at your brand through the eyes of a potential customer. Is the purpose of your service clear? Does it make sense? By doing this, you will be able to create marketing messages that address concerns.
- Measure campaign results – Now that you've determined your audience and crafted a message for it, you now need to determine whether or not you were on the right track. You may discover that an entirely different group of people have been responsive to your outreach campaign. You will need to continually tweak and make changes to your strategy to get the desired result.
Finding your audience is the key to growing a small business. With Key Media Solutions, companies can develop a custom marketing strategy that suits their needs.