The consumer is the most important person when it comes to selling your product or service, not your company. If you sell according to what you think will work best, your results will likely be subpar. However, if you put yourself in your audience’s perspective, you’re going to come out on top. Putting yourself in their shoes ensures you understand your ideal buyer’s interests, needs and wants… which means you can advertise accordingly.
The more you know your customer and the stronger your relationship is, the better your sales will be. So, what is the key to understanding your target audience’s interests and needs? Keep reading to learn the best tactics to understand your ideal consumer, create better digital advertisements and enhance your ROI.
First things first, surveys and questionnaires are your best friends in the marketing world. It’s free information straight from the consumer that takes only a little time to set up. If you automate an email to send after a purchase or after someone unsubscribes from your newsletter, it’s the perfect time to gather information that can help you improve sales in the future and ensure a more loyal fanbase (AKA increasing customer loyalty).
Using tools like SurveyMonkey, Google Forms or Typeform are a great place to start. Ask specific questions about your audience’s preferences, challenges, and desires, what could have gone better, etc. If you’re getting repeat answers, it’s likely something you should hone in on in future communications and marketing.
There’s no better way to understand your customers than setting up one-on-one interviews with them. If you have a particularly passionate customer, they are an ideal candidate for this approach.
Another option for this is following up with a snubbed consumer and asking to speak with them further. Just be sure to approach the conversation with understanding and empathy, so they don’t harbor worse feelings as a result.
At a minimum, you can understand what went wrong to prevent future issues. At best, you might be able to turn them around to try your brand again. Either way, one-on-ones are a great qualitative method for getting deeper insight into the consumer’s mind.
Customer reviews should be one of the first places you look when understanding your consumer. It’s helpful to look at the best ones so you can see what you’re doing right, the worst ones so you can comprehend where you went wrong and the average ones so you get a review with a solid mix of both opinions. This will help you form a better understanding of who your customers are and what they want so you can market to them appropriately. Platforms like Yelp, Amazon, Google Reviews and industry-specific review sites are a great place to start.
While on the feedback topic, it can also be helpful to use feedback tools on your website. Tools like Hotjar or Usabilla can help gather direct feedback from visitors on your website content, usability and more. Otherwise, if you use HubSpot, all that information can be accessible from your dashboard directly.
Studying analytics means you have a big job ahead of you, but it’s imperative to figure out who your audience is. Platforms such as Google Analytics may have a lot of information to sift through, but the incredible part is that it tells a great story about who your consumers are, what they like and what they don’t like. Seeing statistics such as how many people visit your site, which pages they wander to the most, how much time is spent on your site and the path that they follow can tell you important information that you need to know about who your audience is.
Another great place to find analytics and consumer insights is social media platforms. Facebook Insights, X Analytics and LinkedIn Analytics all show you the content that resonates most with your followers and their interests. From there, you’ll be able to find patterns and draw conclusions between your ideal audience and your current customer base.
Monitoring social media accounts or applying social listening tactics helps to understand what people are saying about your company and industry and the sentiment behind it. After discovering what topics are hitting home, you can use that to gauge who your audience is and what they need. Using tools like Brandwatch, Mention or Hootsuite to monitor mentions of your brand, products or industry topics can give you leverage on what content to produce and how to attract your audience.
We grew up with the motto that we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others, yet in the marketing world, the best way to understand your audience is to compare yourself to other brands in the industry. While it might make you a little envious of their approach, this will only help you gauge ideas on what to do next to increase your game. If they are doing a certain campaign and it’s working, try to understand why. What are they doing differently than you, and how can you reach that same level of business “rizz?” Note what kind of content they are producing, which products and services they are showcasing and how their audience responds to each approach.
Sometimes, using segmentation to sort your ideal buyer into smaller groups can increase your marketing and advertising success. Segmenting can occur based on similar demographics, purchase history, brand interaction or any other common factors between your consumer. From there, you can send out certain advertisements that match the segment’s specific interests and needs of that ideal buyer.
Speaking of your ideal buyer, a great tactic is creating buyer personas. These are detailed snippets of your ideal customer or customers based on certain demographics and characteristics for their general life and aspirations. Creating a buyer persona helps you connect to your audience and gives you someone to keep in mind when you’re writing content. However, it’s important to note that these buyer personas should be updated as your customer base changes and more data is accrued. That way, your ideal customer is ever-evolving and always applicable to modern times and a changing society.
To fully integrate yourself into learning about your audience, it helps to become your audience, so to speak. Engaging in forums, groups and online discussions in communities relevant to your niche gives you an easy opportunity to understand your consumer and target audience better. Platforms like Quora, Reddit and other industry-specific forums and websites are basically gold mines filled with in-depth information about your consumer and niche.
While some research can be fun, keyword research specifically can be an arduous task. However, tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, SEMrush, Ahrefs and a variety of other options can help identify what keywords your target audience searches for. From there, you can gather insights into their needs, questions and interests. On top of that, keyword research is fantastic for determining digital advertising topics and asset creation as well as amplifying your website SEO if you apply it correctly.
Related Blog: Digital Advertising Breakdown: Dive into Display, CTV, OTT, ZTV
Similar to exploring reviews and community threads, the comment section on your various marketing channels or published blogs on your website are filled with consumer diamonds. If you haven’t thought to look here, you should start now. With a direct line of communication to your audience, you’ll be surprised and excited to find a lot of revealing information about who your ideal customers are—and who they aren’t—to help you develop an ideal buyer persona.
The world is always changing, and your brand needs to evolve with it. Knowing this, it’s imperative to educate yourself on modern practices by staying up to date in the news and latest trends in your industry. Following industry newsletters and attending workshops, seminars and trade shows ensures you’re always at the top of your game and can stay knowledgeable of modern trends for your consumers. On top of that, regularly reading industry reports, studies and whitepapers helps you gather information since they often contain valuable data on customer preferences, behaviors and trends.
After fully understanding your target audience’s interests and needs, what should you do with the information? Applying it to your buyer personas is the first step. After that, you create new campaigns and digital advertisements that correlate with the newfound information. You’ll likely find that incorporating these methods and consistently paying attention to the feedback and data will help you keep a pulse on your target audience’s evolving interests and needs.
If you need help creating digital advertisements to stand out amidst your competitors, Mailbox Merchants can help you create your ideal campaign to achieve maximum ROI. Connect with us today to get started.
Mailbox Merchants is the Northwest’s largest independently owned direct mail, multi-channel and digital marketing provider for local businesses. We marry the old and the new by tapping into the perpetual power of print media and using technology to strategically segment, target behaviors, and optimize performance through measurable marketing results.
