Identifying and understanding your target market is one of the most important things to do in marketing. Once you have described your customers’ and potential customers’ characteristics such as demo, geo and life stages you can focus your social marketing efforts on those people most likely to buy your product and services.
There is a saying, fish where the fish are. If your a band whose fans are mainly on Myspace, it wouldnt make since to gain more popularity on Linkedin or target people there. Find out where your customer’s are and market to those areas. Guerilla marketing tactics are perfect for this approach because social media focuses on inexpensive ways to reach niche markets with specific messages. Target your resources one niche at a time. After success, move on to the next one. This will help in understanding your strengths and how analyzing your weaknesses.
Market Segmentation
Using market segmentation, your can narrow multiple niches by where they go online or where they spend their money. Typical segments are
- Geo-graphics
- Demographics
- Lifestyle
- Life stages
Remember the message needs to be specific enough to appease the wants and needs of subgroups you are going after.
Geo-graphics-Marketing by location whether country, region, state, city, zip code or neighborhood. Foursquare and GoWalla would be perfect for this as they are location-based social media outlets. Brick and mortar stores can target a specific area to get customers on twitter, facebook, and google+ by searching for them within a certain radius.
Demographics- Gender, age, social class, marital status, education, occupation, income, etc. Knowing these categories of your target market will help define a plan to attract them and discover their interest. For instance, lately Ive seen ads for Indochino, a custom suit company, pop up on sites such as Gilt, Linkedin, CNN, AskMen, and Menshealth. Indochino is most likely for professional men with white collar jobs who value fashion and custom clothes. These sites are perfect for them. Myspace would probably not be the best site to advertise on. Be sure to look for a match between your target audience and the social media service your thinking about using.
Lifestyle-Shared activities, interest, opinion and perspectives can shape a target market. Linkedin itself is a social media tool but also a segmented market as it is a network for professionals. Lifetsyle segmentation helps you craft your message in addition to finding where to promote your company.
Lifestages-Looks at what people in certain demographics are doing with their lives. For instance, social media use varies by the stage of life the person is in. Teenagers and college students are twice as likely to use the internet then retirees. Single people with no kids tend to purchase more fashionable items and spend on recreation and vacation versus someone married with small children who spend on kid’s items, activities and education. Be sure to find out and know what products your targeted lifestage purchases and their use of the internet.
Tips to help in targeting and acquiring your market
- Check competitor’s sites for inbound links from other sites and their outbound links and see how they communicate with their customers.
- Do a small test to see the results of integrating social media into your marketing plan.
- Understand why people use social media and match the patterns to your goals.
Randall Jefferson 