Finding & Targeting the Right Audience for Social Media

For those who are still struggling to benefit from social media marketing, the task may seem daunting. What is it that needs to be done? The answer is simple: research, triangulate and target your specific audience.

It is necessary to have a clear understanding of your targeted social media audience in order to develop and execute your marketing strategies. However, the tricky part is defining your target audience. With 3.78 billion active and available social media users, not all of those accounts can fall within your target. So, how do you start?

What is a Targeted Audience?

Your targeted social media audience is a very specific group of people and is the ones to most likely be interested in your products & services. They are the ones who should be targeted through your ads and content.

These people reflect common characteristics and are the group you would want to reach out to through social media platforms. Having your content and brand messaging specifically directed towards their needs and wants allows them to feel more connected, increasing your engagement and their interest in your brand.

This group of people can be identified based on aspects such as age, gender, location, interests, among many other things. Initially, you can categorize them broadly, like millennials or entrepreneurs; however, finer research can result in much more specific categorization, leading you directly to the sweet spot – your potential customers.

How do you Find Your Targeted Social Media Audience?

Finding your social media audience is a process that aims to narrow down your focus while expanding your reach, and it is easier to identify and define your audience when you know what you’re looking for.

Now, where to start?

You can get started with gathering information on your existing social media audience, along with your current buyers. Who are your customers? Who is subscribed to your social media accounts? Who is interacting with your posts?

You can start by collecting data, such as:

Age: You don’t need specific age numbers; all you need is the decade or the generation they belong to.

Location: Geographical location is a very important aspect; dictating your regional targeting, hours of customer support availability, and the best times for social media posting and interaction.

Language: Knowing what language to communicate in is another essential aspect since it allows you to effectively convey your message. 

Purchasing Power: Discover how much your social media target audience can spend, their approach towards the price category your brand falls in, along the financial concerns or preferences, if any.

Interests: Knowing your audience’s interests is a very vital part of the research. With this, its correct utilization enables you to gain their attention easily.

Challenges: It is important to be aware of all the pain points that your social media audience deals with, as it increases the chance of relatability.

Acquiring all this information requires thorough research. However, social media analytics can also be helpful in gathering important data.

Identify Marketing Personas

In case you are unfamiliar with marketing buyer personas, it is a research-based profile that depicts your targeted customers and describes your ideal customers, all the while projecting detailed customer information like age, gender, interests, education, work, location, purchasing power, family, and even more specifications in some cases.

Having one or multiple marketing personas allows you to understand, relate, and empathize with your customers, which can help you do an improved job of acquiring, retaining, and serving your customers.

Leverage Social Listening

Your dedication towards retaining & serving your customers can also be fulfilled by leveraging social listening, an effective way to discover what your existing & potential customers are talking about, what they think, their opinions, what they need, and what are they expecting.

Offering insight into the conversations about your brand, industry, products, & competitors, social listening requires you to monitor relevant keywords and hashtags that disclose what people are posting, commenting, and talking about.

This has proven to be a great way of finding your targeted social media audience, since you can respond to the relevant posts, and even interact with users who’re not following you. Moreover, it also helps you gather more related hashtags and keywords that are being used, which can then be used to enhance your reach further.

Perform a Competitive Analysis

Along with all the mentioned tactics to find & reach your targeted audience, another effective method is to learn about your active competitors. A competitor analysis would not only ensure enhanced reach but might also enlighten you with some new successful strategies.

A competitive analysis requires you to conduct research on your competitors, compare and contrast, identify personas and targeted audiences, and their engagement success, along with the kind of content that is bringing in results.

Understand Your Impact on Your Social Media Audience

Talking about the kind of content that brings in results leads us to the importance of evaluating how your content is impacting your social media audiences, which determines the interest and the potential reaction of the users.

Behind the selection and production of your content, there needs to be a clear motive of how you want it to impact your audience, and how you want them to react.

In order to get your brand messaging across successfully and persuasively, you need to keep a few things in mind that would help you execute it effectively.

Clarity, for instance, helps you make sure that your audience comprehends exactly what you want to convey; while brevity ensures to keep you on track along with retaining their attention & interest. Additionally, providing context adds relevance, and explains the importance of what you’re saying.

How do you Measure Your Social Media Reach?

After posting the carefully curated content & visuals, the next step for you is to determine how your posts have performed.

This is where you require engagement insights from your social media platforms to gain a comprehensive and explanatory analysis of how effective the posting has been.
The analysis would include the number of clicks, views, comments, and likes/reactions; along with the number of people who’ve shared your posts with their social circle.

So, What’s Next?

Once you have narrowed down your targeted social media audience, you can then focus and make every marketing decision, strategy, and execution based specifically on your audience – allowing you to offer a very personalized experience that your audience can resonate with.

Social media is only beneficial when used correctly, so having a digital marketing team, such as NX3 Corporation, by your side is essential to help your business grow, and to guide you through your social media marketing phases.