Identifying Your Target Audience for Influencer Marketing Campaigns
There are schools of thought in marketing that if your campaign reaches the masses, then it is a successful advertisement. While there are undeniable benefits to this way of thinking, the world of reaching the masses has changed. People are constantly facing advertisements and are beginning to feel fatigued when it comes to new products or campaigns. This makes it difficult for marketers because the goal of reaching a large group of people has changed.
Creating campaigns for target audiences is the most effective marketing strategy in the current social climate. Audiences want products that will only be useful to them to appear on their social media, not just a random amalgamation of products. This means that brands have to begin identifying their target audience, instead of hoping to reach the few people their product will resonate with through mass advertisement. Let’s talk about discovering your target audience.
What is a Target Audience?
Not to be confused with the target market which is who you plan to sell your product to, a target audience is the group of people you want to market to. How does this work in practice? If you are a vitamin supplement brand, you want to reach people who are interested in beginning to take vitamins along with those who already take them. You want to connect with people who are considering taking the step towards supplements but just haven’t done it yet; however, your product will be the push they need to begin their supplement journey.
To identify your target audience, you’ll need to know the following:
Age
Gender
Income
Location
Finding your target audience will not only help you connect with your current interested customers, but it will help you expand to those who don’t know about your brand yet.
Audience Segmentation
Once you’ve identified your target audience, you can move into a more detailed analysis. Audience segmentation is the process of dividing your audience into smaller groups based on shared characteristics. So beyond age, gender, etc., you’re looking into audience behavior and personality. Through audience segmentation, you’ll be able to create more personalized campaigns which will be more effective in the long run.
For example, if you are a fitness brand you might segment by age, gender, fitness level, and exercise interests. With older groups, you may craft your campaign to talk more about how this product will help problems that only arise as you age. Or you may recommend a different use for the product depending on what fitness level that segment is at. As reported by Notify Visitors, marketers who segmented their audience before campaigning stated that the revenue generated increased to up to 760%. You can see why it is important to consider audience segmentation when working with target audiences.
The main types of audience segmentation are:
Demographics - statistical data that describes a target audience, such as age, gender, income, education, and relationship status.
Psychographics - classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria.
Geographics - where the audience is located.
Behavioral - grouping customers according to their behavior when making purchasing decisions.
Technographics - what type of technology are they using during purchasing.
Each of these segmentations will affect how you strategize. Consider each when working on your campaign, especially during personalization.
Creating Your Customer Persona
Now you may know specifics about your target audience through segmentation but another great way to identify your target audience is through creating a customer persona. Think of this person as the brand representative in a way. Who do you see buying this product and benefiting from it?
Through creating a customer persona, you’ll get to understand the thought process of your audience in a detailed way. In order to create one, you’ll want to consider the following:
Age
Profession/job title
Education level
Income level
Marital status
Goals
Pain points (problems that need solving)
Media consumption
Hobbies
Habits
After identifying these characteristics, you can begin to see how someone might want to be advertised to. Say your customer persona is Aly, a college student who is having some trouble sleeping, loves to scroll through Instagram Reels, and is interested in clean/aesthetic products. Your marketing team can create a campaign that is only on Instagram Reels, promotes your new melatonin supplement, and has a simple aesthetic that is relevant to the current social climate.
By going through this exercise, you won’t have wasted the time creating content for Facebook and TikTok and Instagram, you’ll only have created something for IG Reels because that is where your customer persona lives.
Benefits of Knowing Your Target Audience
Identifying your target audience can seem time consuming and require a lot of team effort but the benefits of going through this practice are worth it. By knowing your target audience your brand will have:
A stronger brand identity.
More effective campaign strategies.
Improved customer acquisition.
Increased brand loyalty.
Increase in ROI.
Through this strategy, you will gain new customers and retain existing ones all while creating a stronger brand. According to a Hubspot survey, only 42% of marketers know the basic demographic information of their target audience. This means that if you begin identifying your target audience, you’ll be ahead of the curve in the race for personalized marketing.
Discover Your Target Audience for Success
One of the best results of influencer marketing is the increased sense of community that can be built through campaigns. Learning about your influencers, their audiences, and your brand audience, brings together people who share a common interest: your brand. To learn more about how to create successful campaigns, check out the rest of our blogs and reach out to our team at CEG so we can help you on your influencer marketing journey.
