What is a target audience?
Your target audience is going to be a group of consumers that are most likely going to be interested in your product or service. This will be the group of people that your advertisement campaigns should be aimed at. Identifying your target audience can save your business money, resources, and time. This is because you are able to cater to consumers you know may be interested in your product, rather than to a mass audience who won’t show you any interest.
What is an example of a target audience?
Your target audience will usually share similar traits or interests. This may include:
- Gender
- Age
- Location
- Social and economic status
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An example may be that if you are advertising a makeup service, your target audience would include women (and men!) who are within your working travel distance, and who earn enough money to be able to afford your service. So example, if you are working in New York, you won’t be wanting to target customers living in London.
Having your target audience will also help you define which social media platform is best to advertise your service. For example, if your target audience is teenagers and young adults, TikTok and Instagram would be a great choice to use.
Another example may be that if you create websites, you may want to include small business owners in your target audience. This could be because they don’t have the skills to build their own websites, or they are using social media as their main stream of marketing and purely use their social media as their websites.
Reaching your Target Audience
According to reports, there are currently 3.96 billion people world wide who are active users of some form of social media. Facebook currently has 2.7 billion active users monthly, with people spending an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes on any given social media site.
This means that your business could even have the chance of reaching potential customers on a much wider scale than if you were to only market your business in your base country and area.
As mentioned earlier, having a Facebook and Instagram business profile, for example give you the option to target very specific audiences all down to your choosing. Their algorithms allow for your paid posts to be shown to audiences who have already shown interest in your field of business, either by who and what posts they are already following, by what products or services they may have searched for, or what they may have recently purchased.
Using hashtags (# followed by a word or phrase), are commonly used to highlight categories of topics related to their post. Other users can also search for these hashtags to view your post. This is a very easy and quick way to reach your target audiences.Â
Table of Contents
How many people do you know that are not active users of at least one social media platform? Probably not many, if not none. That fact alone is why you should be using social networks for your own advantage of boosting your business.
Some individuals are still unsure how they can make the most of using social media platforms or how much a good social media strategy can actually be effective.
How much will using social media advertising cost me? How many people will see my posts? How will I know if these strategies are working? How to increase social media presence? This post will answer all those questions and more as we explain our top 5 advantages of using social media sites to market your business.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing Definition
Also known as e-marketing and digital marketing, social media marketing is using social media platforms to connect and share with your audience online with the aim of building your brand, promoting a product or a service, increasing sales and website traffic, and more.
Posting on your social media sites can consist of text, photos, audio, and videos etc, and the best part is that you have total freedom to post in whichever format you decide works best with your business!
Social Media Marketing vs Social Media Management
While social media marketing is more to do publishing content with the main intent to grow your brand, social media management is the actual act of managing your social media accounts.
Managing your social network accounts can involve posting your social media content, creating a posting schedule, responding to comments and messages, and engaging with your audience. Having the role of a social media manager, this will usually make you responsible for monitoring and managing your businesses social media presence.
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Now that we have differentiated between social media marketing and social media management, here is what we consider the top 5 reasons you should be marketing on social media -
Top 5 Reasons you should be marketing on social media
1. Very Cost Effective
If you are on a budget for your business, you don’t always have to spend big bucks to market your business and optimize your exposure. Compared to traditional ways of marketing and advertising like print ads in newspapers, or billboards, printing out brochures, or paying for a television slot; marketing your business on social networks can be completely free.
Social Media Cost
Signing your business up on the most popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Youtube, will cost you no money. Why would you not want to give your business more exposure for free? If you reach your marketing goals on social media and use it successfully, then this can even help bring down the overall costs that your business is spending on marketing.
Having what is called a ‘business profile’ set up on the major social platforms gives you the option of using paid promotion. This lets you choose whichever post of yours you like to be a sponsored post. This is an effective way of reaching a more specific audience. You are able to choose for example, your desired audience age range, their location, their gender etc. This option can be as budget friendly as you wish as it depends all on you – how many people would you like your post to reach? How long would you like to keep your sponsored post up?
2. Opportunity to Connect With Your Customers 1-on-1
Social media is a very easy and user-friendly way to increase customer interaction, existing or potential. Your customers are able to comment on your posts with whatever they wish, maybe to show support for your business, or to even ask you a question. In turn, you are able to respond to these comments directly, so you are able to speak with your customers/viewers on a more personal level.
On Facebook and Google business, they are able to leave ratings and comments as a review on their experience of their interactions with your business. Having well received ratings, usually done on a 1-5 star rating, can lead you to rank higher when potential customers search for a product or service in your field.
1-on-1 customer interaction can create brand loyalty as people can appreciate that their message response is more personal as they are speaking with another human, rather than receiving an automated message back. Brand loyalty is important to keep your business a steady clientele. A study shows that millennials are the most loyal generation to their favorite brands, and it is all thanks to social networks.
3. Easy to Target Your Audience
What is a target audience?
Your target audience is going to be a group of consumers that are most likely going to be interested in your product or service. This will be the group of people that your advertisement campaigns should be aimed at. Identifying your target audience can save your business money, resources, and time. This is because you are able to cater to consumers you know may be interested in your product, rather than to a mass audience who won’t show you any interest.
What is an example of a target audience?
Your target audience will usually share similar traits or interests. This may include:
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An example may be that if you are advertising a makeup service, your target audience would include women (and men!) who are within your working travel distance, and who earn enough money to be able to afford your service. So example, if you are working in New York, you won’t be wanting to target customers living in London.
Having your target audience will also help you define which social media platform is best to advertise your service. For example, if your target audience is teenagers and young adults, TikTok and Instagram would be a great choice to use.
Another example may be that if you create websites, you may want to include small business owners in your target audience. This could be because they don’t have the skills to build their own websites, or they are using social media as their main stream of marketing and purely use their social media as their websites.
Reaching your Target Audience
According to reports, there are currently 3.96 billion people world wide who are active users of some form of social media. Facebook currently has 2.7 billion active users monthly, with people spending an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes on any given social media site.
This means that your business could even have the chance of reaching potential customers on a much wider scale than if you were to only market your business in your base country and area.
As mentioned earlier, having a Facebook and Instagram business profile, for example give you the option to target very specific audiences all down to your choosing. Their algorithms allow for your paid posts to be shown to audiences who have already shown interest in your field of business, either by who and what posts they are already following, by what products or services they may have searched for, or what they may have recently purchased.
Using hashtags (# followed by a word or phrase), are commonly used to highlight categories of topics related to their post. Other users can also search for these hashtags to view your post. This is a very easy and quick way to reach your target audiences.Â
4. Easy to Analyze your Performance
What is the meaning of analytics? (Analytics Definition)
Every social media platform has it’s own analytics platforms which allow you to view insights. This can range from viewing details on how many people viewed your profile, how many are interacting with your posts, how many clicks your posts get, and more. You can view your analytics straight through each platform. However, there are plenty of social media management tools like Hootsuite where you can put all your socials in one place and manage your analytics from there.
Why your analytics are important
You will always want to know how well your marketing campaign is performing. As easy as it is for you to create your social media accounts for your business, it is just as easy to turn your page into a business account profile. With a business profile you are able to easily view your analytics to gain insights on how well your posts and pages are being received by your target audience.
5. Freedom to Create your own Social Media Content
This is a great outlet for anyone who is a content creator. The great thing about social media is that there are plenty of different options, so there is something for everyone. Just like the way everyone learns in their own ways and styles, social media gives you the freedom with your content creation and post in which ever way you wish.
Whether you like to write, create videos, take photos, or create graphics, it’s all there as an option for you. You can also post as frequently as you would like. You can even use a social media content calendar to organize your posting schedule. What you decide to post will be your way of showing your audience what your business is about and getting them more interested and familiar with you.
How do you help someone with a creative block?
Everyone deals with the struggle of a creative block in different ways. If you haven’t found what works for you yet, here are some suggestions:
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If you are struggling to get started with your social media or are having a creative block, let us help you take care of creating social media content and more.
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