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Maria Haase

Free Social Media Strategy Course: What is my Social TargetMarket?

In Part 2 of our free Social Media Strategy Course, I will show you how tooptimize your Social Media efforts by reaching the right people, yourfuture customers and clients, at the right place with the right mindset.

To be successf ul in Social Media and not wasting your Marketing Dollars, youneed to pay attention to three things:

1. Who are the people that are most likely to buy your product or service?

2. Where can you reach them most ef f ectively and engage with them in ameaningf ul way?

3. Are they in the right mindset to buy your product or service?

Shouting vs Listening

There are two ways to approach the whole Marketing/Sales thing. There are the people that believe that theirproduct/service is the right f it f or every single one of the 7.1 billion people on this world. They want to appealto everybody, because they see everybody as a potential customer. This approach uses high volumeadvertisement such as TV commercials or glossy ads in f ancy magazines to shout their message to the world.The goal is to bring in more money, so they can reach even more people on even more mass media channels.These companies pursue one way communication with their customers. And this strategy works. If you have alarge budget and can compete with the big guys.

If your company’s Marketing budget a bit more modest, there are other strategies that might work better toachieve your company’s revenue goals. Work smarter not harder. If you have limited f unds, you can onlyreach a limited number of people. So you have to make a smart choice of who is actually most likely topurchase your product or service and eliminate groups that are very unlikely to purchase.

There are three major advantages to focusing your Marketing efforts on a targeted audience:

1. it costs less money

2. a targeted audience will actually listen and pay attention to what you are saying

3. they are actually willing to pay more, because you are providing a specialized product or service to them thatthey know will provide a solution to their specif ic problem

But how do you do that? What is the best way to narrow down your list f rom 7.1 billion to a reasonablenumber? Well, there are a f ew tactics that I will show you how to get a laser sharp f ocus on who your targetmarket is.

1. Who are the people that are most likely to buy your product or service?

Why is advertisement so annoying and why do you thinkpeople go through a whole lot of ef f ort to avoid being

marketed to? Because companies in the past, and sadly evennow, are pushing their advertisement to people who, simplyput, don’t care about your company, your product or yourservice.

The f irst step in f inding a targeted audience f or your productor service (yes, you probably have to create a new TargetMarket Analysis f or each one of them) is to break it up.There are 5 ways to look at your market : Geographic,Sociographic, Demographic, Behavioral and Psychographic.Each of them looks at the same kind of people, but f rom adif f erent angle. Then you select the most suitable customersf rom within each category and where they overlap, you willf ind a it. Your Target Market.

So here is how it works:

Geographic:

Geographic targeting is probably one of the easiest, so let’s start with this one. In addition, local search hasbeen kind of a buzz word f or the past couple of years and that f or good reason. Targeting a local audienceworks f or the majority of all businesses. Most companies out there are small to medium sized businesses andmany of them target a local market. If you are a hairdresser in San Diego, you don’t have to waste your moneyon people to see your ads in Nevada. That was pretty easy, right. But what if you are a business consultingf irm and your clients are all over the US? Well, quite f rankly they probably aren’t. Concentrate on the majorhubs f or your industry and don’t make your decision based on only one of the 5 f actors that determine yourtarget market.

Sociographic:

Now we are jumping to one of the harder ones to determine and especially, to quantif y, but also one of themost powerf ul. Sociographic segmentation looks at the personal and individualized needs of your customers.What are their personal interests and what do they feel passionate about? Who are their f riends andf amily? What is their personal prof ile? Social Media is actually a great way to f ind that out, because itencourages two-way conversation and you will only gather this inf ormation, if you connect with yourcustomers on a personal level. If you get to know your customers so well that they share this kind ofinf ormation with you, and can provide them with a good or service that will speak to them on this level, you areon to something. If not, be more personable, share things of your own. Be honest and reliable. Build up trust.And over t ime you will get there.

Demographics:

Now back to the hard f acts. These are pretty easy to collect and still quite valuable. Find out the age, gender,education level, employment status and income of your customers. TIP: Don’t f orget to keep in that f ormany products and services, the consumer of the product and the buyer are not the same. If you areorganizing youth travel trips, you not only have to make it f un and excit ing f or the kids, but also appeal to theparents who are more interested in the saf ety and well being of their children.

Behavioral:

Behavioral Segmentation of your Target Market takes into consideration how the consumer interacts withyour product or service . If you have an inf ormational product, do you target a beginner, intermediate oradvanced audience? If you are a f itness studio, do you target people who sign up on January 1st and who you

don’t expect to show up when March comes around? Are they early adapters, lurkers or passionate f ans ofyour product or service?

Psychographic:

And the last way to separate your sheep f rom the goats is to look at the values, att itudes and lifestyles(VALs) of your customers. Are they cheapskates and you can hook them with a discount or a stripped versionof your product/service? Or do they bath in Evian and be treated like royalty when they interact with yourcompany? Remember, even if you are a B2B company, the people who you interact with will not give up theirVALs at the door when coming to work and of ten times, they will adopt the VALs of their customers.

2. Where can you reach them most ef fectively and engage with them in ameaningful way?

Once you have your potential customer base boiled down to a viable Target Market, it is not too hard to f igureout on which Social Media Networks they spend their t ime on. I wrote a more detailed post that gives you Tipswhich demographics spend time on which Social Media Networks and how to f ind targeted SocialMedia Networks for your niche . Also, check out this awesome Inf ographic by Pew Research Center:

3. Are they in the right mindset to buy your product orservice?

Ok, so you have def ined your Social Target Market, then you have f igured outwhere to f ind the people that are most likely to buy your product. Now you areready to post, right? Well, not quite yet. First you have to listen. What are theysaying about your brand? Your industry? Your competitor? Maybe you f ind out thatyour Target Market uses Twitter to bash your brand and complain. Probably not theright t ime and place to stomp in there and start selling to them, right?

You need to build up trust f irst and provide stellar customer service. Listen, careand engage. The more you do that, the more relevant inf ormation you can provideto them. Listen to the question they are asking. How far along in the decisionmaking process are they? Are you still in the “providing inf ormation” stage tobuild trust or do they already want to talk specif ics like price or warranty? When isa good time to reach them? While they might be online between 5-7 pm, theymight be preoccupied with taking care of the kids and prepping dinner, but it mightbe a good reminder so they can discuss the buying decision at the dinner table.Test and see what t imes work best f or which audience.

But wait, I don’t want to go ahead and start of f with next week’s part of our f reeSocial Media Strategy course, where I will show you how to set up a Social MediaEditorial Calender. Thanks so much f or f ollowing along this series and I hope youlearned something new through this blog post.

Please make sure to sign up below to receive an email every time we update ourblog, so you won’t miss any part of this f ree Social Media Strategy course! Also,please f eel f ree to share this f ree resource with your coworkers, employees orprof essional network!

We’ll be sending out our Free Social Media Strategy Course updates every Mondayover the course of 12 weeks. Stay tuned and sign up below so you don’t miss any

part of our 12 Step Social Media Strategy Course.

Top Image Source: Based on image of Bevgoodwin