Written by Polka Dot Marketing

Proper marketing is essential when it comes to growing your business. This is an obligation that simply cannot be overlooked.

However, you won’t be able to market efficiently if you don’t know your target audience inside and out. For those who aren’t quite sure why this information is so essential, we’ve created a quick guide to help get you on track.

Let’s get started.

Determine the Needs You Can Satisfy

In order for your marketing strategy to succeed, you will need to appeal to your target demographic in a particular way. To elaborate, you will need to illustrate that you can satisfy their major pain points.

For example, let’s assume that you own a commercial cleaning company. It would be your goal to showcase to your audience the time that they can save on achieving professional results by hiring your business.

If you don’t have a thorough understanding of your audience, though, there’s a strong chance you won’t be able to target them appropriately. 

In this case, a professional cleaning service becomes more useful the larger the business is since it would take more time for employees to clean the workspace on their own.

Under the right circumstances, people will pay for a product or service as long as it solves a problem in their lives. So, it’s imperative that you fully understand the issues that your organisation is able to resolve.

Reach the Right People

In the above scenario, a misguided marketing attempt might focus too much on owners of smaller businesses who don’t necessarily need to hire a cleaning service. This can easily result in spending a significant amount of money on marketing without achieving the results you desire.

Depending on the scenario, this situation could be highly difficult to recover from. However, reaching the right type of individual isn’t always a one-step process.

This commonly comes into play when developing a marketing plan for children’s products. The child themselves is not the one making the purchasing decision despite being the one who will use the product.

So, the marketing strategy will need to appeal both to the child and their parent. Otherwise, you run the risk of creating obstacles that can prevent the appropriate party from making a purchase.

Tailor Specific Messages

As you might expect, having a strong understanding of your target audience will allow you to create the most effective message possible. Let’s assume that we are still using the aforementioned cleaning company example.

Company A has a clearly defined target audience comprised of owners or CEOs of medium to large-sized businesses. In general, these individuals are looking to save as much time as possible for their company and do not mind investing money to do so.

In fact, they are willing to invest in virtually anything as long as it provides a sufficient return.

Company B, however, isn’t quite sure who they should be targeting. They know that they can provide great results to business owners, but they don’t convey how they stand out.

As each company develops its marketing plan, Company A realises that the individuals they are marketing toward are typically between 40 and 55 years old and have a substantial level of income. They are also in charge of making pivotal decisions for their organisation.

From here, they are able to develop a strategy that appeals to this type of person.

Company B simply targets business owners. As you can tell, their marketing strategy has plenty of issues even in its early stages. This is especially true considering that many businesses operate entirely online these days.

It should come as no surprise that company A is highly likely to vastly outperform company B in terms of marketing results.

Cost Efficiency

Regardless of how much revenue your marketing strategy is able to generate, it won’t mean much if you are barely breaking even on the amount that you invest. The stronger understanding you have of your target audience, the more cost-efficient your marketing strategy will be.

This is strictly due to the fact that each dollar spent will have a larger impact on your capability to produce the desired results.

Businesses that only have a loose understanding of their audience often end up spending a large amount of money to target a large group of people. But, targeting people outside of your main audience will not provide the results that you are looking for.

When you are able to properly configure your marketing strategy, you can reinvest the revenue you generate into additional marketing efforts on a larger scale. As long as you keep things finely tuned, you will find that you’ll be able to continuously generate large numbers.

If you aren’t quite sure what steps you should take in order to optimise your marketing strategy, it’s highly recommended that you outsource to a professional. Doing so will help get you on the right track and give you the greatest chance of success.

Always Ensure That You Know Your Target Audience

This is the first step toward developing a comprehensive marketing plan. Additionally, your target audience may change over time, so it’s important for you to reassess every now and then.

From here, you’ll be able to fully know your target audience and take the necessary steps to grow your company. 

Want to learn more about what Polka Dot Marketing has to offer? Feel free to reach out to us today and see how we can help.